MINI Countryman Estate (2010 - 2017) practicality

The MINI Countryman safety levels are impressive and reinforced by the full five stars it qualified for in the Euro NCAP safety rating tests. And there's more than enough safety equipment on a standard model to give you peace of mind.

To keep you out of trouble you get traction control, stability control, Electronic Brake Force Distribution, Cornering Brake Control, Brake Assist and Hill Assist. There are also six airbags, Isofix child safety seat mountings and a tyre warning system.

This is a surprisingly practical five-door car if you have a couple of young kids to ferry around each day. The rear seats can slide backwards and forwards and the back angle can be adjusted too. At their full extent there's plenty of legroom for rear-seat passengers and, predictably, for a crossover there's a lot of headroom too.

There's a 350-litre boot, which can be increased to 1,170 litres when you fold the rear seats down. That's pretty good: the Nissan Qashqai offers 410 litres with seats up, but only 860 litres of total load space. The Countryman is not quite as good as a Ford Focus though (it has 385 litres with seats up and 1,247 litres with seats down) but this is a MINI, which has never been considered a paragon of practicality.

There's also a clever panel behind the rear seats that can be folded down to create a flat floor (without it the boot floor is sunken), but the rear seats cannot be folded totally flat because there is a very slight angle.

You can either have a five-seat version with three seats in the back or a four-seater with an extended central rail running down the middle where you can attach all manner of things such as a mobile phone holder, a sunglasses case holder, cup holder and if you are of a flashy disposition, an iPad holder.

Depending on the rear-seat configuration you can fold them down in a 60:40 split for three rear-seat passengers and the backrests, by contrast, can be arranged in a 40:20:40 split for extra flexibility.