How much space is there?

Lots. Headroom is generous everywhere and there’s loads of space for front seat passengers. The amount of space in the back is more surprising, though – even with the front seats adjusted to suit two six-foot passengers, there’s still a good six inches between your knees and the seat.

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There’s a reasonable amount of adjustment in the Tivoli’s seats, but we’d have liked the wheel to telescope out of the dashboard more. Taller drivers will need to choose between over-reaching for the wheel or having scrunched up legs.

Boot space and storage

Because the Tivoli is now only available with front wheel drive, its boot stands up well to the competition as there’s no rear differential eating up room. With the rear seats up, there’s 427 litres of space on offer. SsangYong also says that its shape makes it the only car in its class that capable of carrying three sets of golf clubs. It’s all about the small wins, right?

Joking aside, the Tivoli’s boot is still fractionally bigger than the Nissan Juke’s 422-litre boot and eons ahead of the Vauxhall Mokka’s pokey 350-litre effort. There’s also a configurable boot board which allows you to either create a box to secure fragile items or make a hidden storage area under the boot floor. With the boards in their highest setting, there isn’t much of a load lip, either.

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The rear bench folds in a 40:60 split, and the backrest can be stood up in a more vertical position to make some extra space for luggage. Up front, there are overhead storage trays for your sunglasses, a glovebox big enough for a laptop and door bins large enough for litre water bottles.

Safety

• Four-star Euro NCAP safety rating
• Child occupant protection not as good as rivals
• Adult protection is better, but still lags behind

Euro NCAP crash-tested the Tivoli back in 2016, awarding it a four-star safety rating. Since then, SsangYong has increased the amount of standard safety equipment on offer, taking autonomous emergency braking off the options list and bolting on the car as standard.

The four-star rating remains though, due to its poor performance in the child occupant protection category. In the frontal impact test, the 10-year-old dummy sustained severe injuries to the neck and the six-year-old dummy received a heavy impact to the chest. However, both dummies were well protected in the side impact test.

Nevertheless, it might be worth looking elsewhere if you need an SUV to haul your family around. The Tivoli performs better in the adult occupant protection category – although chest compression for the driver and rear passenger in front impacts is still marginal for the category. We suppose you get what you pay for.

Watch the SsangYong Tivoli crash test video