THE ultimate in affordable auto chic is on the way from Vauxhall with a car called ADAM.

This city slicker takes personalisation to a new level and can be decked out in more than a million combinations.

The odds are no two ADAMs will be the same and Vauxhall is targeting the growing band of young motorists who want their cars to ‘laugh out loud'.

Priced from £11,255 the ADAM is a cheeky looking three-door hatch with plenty of personality and panders to the gadget generation who love their smartphones, tablet computers and the social media scene.

It will be arriving next Spring and forms the cornerstone of a Vauxhall style offensive as the company marks its 110 anniversary making it the UK's oldest surviving car maker.

Swish design has become a feature of its current crop of models which began with the Insignia, then the Astra and the recently-launched Mokka compact SUV.

The ADAM - named after Adam Opel who founded Vauxhall's European sister brand Opel -  ups the ante in no uncertain fashion.

While rivals such as the Ford Ka, Fiat 500, the MINI and Citroen's DS models can all be made to measure with a myriad of options, the ADAM dares to be different and allows owners to change the interior trim whenever they want.

With three models, named Jam, Glam and Slam the ADAM range features 1.2 and 1.4-litre petrol engines - the latter having two power outputs of 87 and 100ps - and prices top out at £14,295 before extras.

All are good for around 55 to the gallon and with stop/start fitted emissions are 118g/km for the 1.2 and 119 for the 1.4.

There is no diesel but an all-new three cylinder one-litre turbo engine will be arriving later next year.

The ADAM is built at the same factory in Germany as the Corsa with which it shares its underpinnings but is slightly smaller. That also goes for the fuel tank which at 8.5 gallons gives a range of around 500 miles.

We have just tried out the lower powered 1.4-litre ADAM and saw an average of 48mpg driving in and around the Portuguese capital Lisbon.

On the road the ADAM may not be the quickest out of the blocks - 0 to 60 takes 12.5 seconds - but its handling is neat enough for some fun thanks to a wider track and shorter wheelbase than the MINI.

Sports suspension is standard on versions fitted with 17 and 18-inch wheels which firms up the ride while stability control and hill start assist are standard.

The power steering can be switched into a lighter setting for town work. An automatic parking system is an extra but will slot the car automatically into roadside spaces or car park bays.

The parking system comes combined with blind spot alerts and at £450 is one of a catalogue of extras which are the ADAM's forte.

There are 12 body colours, three roof finishes, 20 different wheel types including some with coloured clips for added decor, four interior colours, 18 trim options and two of those come backlit with LEDs.

That is just for starters. Forego a sunroof and you can have a starlight headlining featuring a galaxy of 64 LEDs and the only other car like that at the moment is a Rolls-Royce.

Other headliner styles are a chequered flag or a sky scene which can be combined with the starlight finish.

Like the interior trim finishes, which cost £70, the headliners are changeable at any Vauxhall dealer and prices run from £100 to £450.

The cabin is posh and well finished although room in the rear seats is tight. Boot space ranges from 362 to 1,372 litres but fit an upgraded Infinity sound system and the basic cargo capacity is slashed by half to accommodate the speakers. As such you would struggle to fit in a single wheelie bag.

The centrepiece of the dashboard is a touchscreen which is driven by your smartphone. Vauxhall calls the software IntelliLink and for £275 it allows access to any music and images stored on the phone to supplement the ADAM's digital radio.

More importantly there are a number of apps including a sat nav system which is expected to cost about £30 for comprehensive European mapping and three years of updates.

The extras list goes on with eight ambient interior light settings, body decals and a bundle of option packs - all with ‘hip' names and a variety of prices ranging from £125 to £995.

Take your pick from paint jobs called Papa Don't Peach, James Blonde and I'll Be Black, option packs named Twisted Green and Extreme Carbon and decals dubbed Splat or Fly and you get the drift.

As an example a 1.4 87ps ADAM Jam with a basic price of £11,875 would come in just shy of £16,000 if you went the whole hog and specced it out to the extreme.

That would include leather upholstery, 17-inch alloys, starlight and cloud headliner, the parking system, smartphone hook up, Splat decals and Vauxhall's FlexFix bicyle rack - not to mention a keyfob to match the colour scheme.

As such that's a luxury package at a bargain price and it must be the cheapest way of creating a one-off car which is absolutely individual.

With Vauxhall anticipating to sell only around 10,000 versions a year there's going to be added exclusivity which no doubt will spawn plenty of Adamistas sharing their experiences on the pages of Facebook and Twitter.