One of the great heartbreaks of testing lovely press cars is in returning the odd one, shamefaced, to the press office sporting some form of damage.

I’d like to claim that I’m not entirely to blame. Massive degradation in ride quality to the standard of pull-along toy duck pliancy aside, the worst attribute of the increasingly in-vogue combination of ultra-low profile tyre and paella pan-sized alloy wheel is the alarming ease with which the latter – these days sitting more or less flush with the wall of the attendant rubber – may be kerbed; a glowing quiz show needle of guilt wincing ever further round the dial the more protracted that ghastly-sounding gruuunge becomes. And I’m sure it’s an issue you have to deal with, especially at end of contract time.

You could say it is an unforgivable error. After all, kerbs don’t suddenly leap out of bushes at you. But all it takes is one dropped kerb stone, and I defy anyone who racks up serious mileage every year to tell me they haven’t done it. Especially during the first few weeks of ownership, when unearthing Atlantis proves a somewhat lesser task than accurately locating the corners of today’s high-waisted, stunted-glasshouse cars.

Unfortunately, my ongoing resolution to steer clear of kerbs wherever possible is not helping my pressed metal preservation cause in the slightest because, no matter how careful I may be, the rest of the car is still wide open to assault from all comers. And I’m not talking the bona fide biff of a proper accident here, merely the damage inflicted by other people’s parking.

Of late I’ve come to wish that my office window didn’t afford me such a good view of my local town square’s steeply sloping car park. Because, from here, I bear daily witness to a succession of Mudfordshire yummy mummies sporting hip-slung babies and craniums full of cappuccino and calico cuddly toy stuffing allowing the doors of their parked crossovers to flail willy-nilly into the increasingly bruised flanks of my latest pristine victim, before applying the universal “oops-silly-me-titter” cure-all of a quick rub with a licked finger followed by hasty flight.

Sadly, through an abject failure to fall with any style down three flights of stairs sufficiently fast to make an interception, I have also, as yet, been entirely unsuccessful in my efforts to lambast any of the culprits face-to-face.

Such careless behaviour drives the sentient crazy because, of course, this relentless, piccicato panel punctuation ultimately takes a serious toll. I still vividly remember, 30 years ago, taking my pretty Mk 1 Scirocco GTi back whence it came for a trade-in, only to be told; ‘There isn’t a clean panel on it,’ and promptly offered half the readies of my reckoning. Thing is, so stealthily had the plethora of minor blemishes burgeoned, I hadn’t even noticed.

More recently, and to my shame, a similar eight month-long accumulation of diminutive biffs sent a handsome estate back to Mazda more flayed than the raffle prize car out of which the hapless Ted attempted to beat the most minuscule of dents in my very favourite episode of Father Ted.

So what’s at the root of this? Given that people are not going to suddenly become less callous overnight, the real problem, I fear, lies in parking space size.

Why, of all the modern motoring eras available from which to take an average vehicle size, do car park designers still insist on plumping for that of the Ford Anglia and Morris Mini?

The other day I finally shoehorned a Range Rover Sport into a particularly tight spot, only to discover, despite interior clambering freneticism matched only by a hot, mad spaniel, that I actually couldn’t then get out of any single door. I have a nasty suspicion that local authority revenues may lie at the heart of the matter.

With all of the above insoluble, then, we’re left waiting, with some trepidation, for the manufacturers to deliver us from our svelte, 21st century, integrated bumper and colour-coded everything school of hard knocks to a more lumpen, injection-moulded world wherein cars wear their airbags on the outside.

And that’s why I was studying the overgrown bubble-wrap door panel of the new Citroën Cactus with more than a little interest at this year’s Geneva Motor Show.