BMW USED CARS

The Megane estate (sorry, ‘Sport Tourer') is a big car.
Bigger, obviously, than the Megane hatch, but also... just big. 456cm long, to
be precise: longer than the Golf estate, a full 10cm longer than the Ford Focus
estate and, tellingly, nigh-on as long as the Mondeo estate from the Nineties.
The rant that cars are getting inexorably larger is a well-trodden one, but it
might not be a bad thing in this case: if you're in the market for a LaSigniDeo-type
estate, take a poke round one of these first.

I was rather looking forward to
the i20. What better for these constricted days than a new supermini from
Hyundai, new entrants to the respectable mainstream and maker of the i30?
Hyundai owns Kia, after all, and I raved about the Soul last month. Nothing
embarrassing about Korean cars any more. So the i20 had to be a canny way to
cut our cloth to suit the times.

But the path from
preconceptions to first impressions is a rocky one. Parked on my street, where
the new Fiesta and Ka looked alluring, the i20's styling falls a long way
short. And inside, this base model is a mildly depressing place to be.

The
budget diesel supermini sector is hardly renowned for producing searingly quick
cars, but even among such modest company, the Hyundai i20 diesel is truly,
heroically slow.

Powered
by a 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel, the three-door i20 takes over 16
seconds to lumber to 60mph. That's the sort of acceleration considered slow by
continental shelves: comparably powered rivals from Ford, Skoda and even
Citroen will manage it in comfortably under 15 seconds (OK, so it's not a quick
sector).

It's taken a few months for the MiTo
to get a proper diesel engine. So far it's been getting by on a safe but dull
1.3-litre unit, but now we have this - a 1.6-litre looking to flex its muscles
in the direction of a Mini Cooper D. It's about the same size as the Mini's,
give or take a cubic centimetre or two, but gets a lot more torque (236lb ft
versus 177).

Unfortunately, that extra shove gives
the MiTo's CO2 figure a
kick in the guts. That plentiful torque is useful if quick driving is your
kinda thing, but not great if you're looking for a cheaper tax disc. While the Mini emits a squeaky-clean 104g/km, the MiTo puts out 126. That's an 85-quid-a-year
difference.

Back in the day, the phenomenon of
hyperniching was pretty much left to the guys from Stuttgart. ("How about we
launch an almost pointless jacked-up SUV people carrier thing?"
"Great!") However, times have changed, and now it appears that Audi is also keen
to cash in on the potential of micro-markets.

So we find ourselves at the wheel of
the new A4 Allroad - a car set to fill the unsightly and gaping hole
between a traditional A4 Avant and the off-roady Q5, which is in itself a
jacked-up A4 chassis.

Facts and figures. The dull but
impressive conversation-killers that completely define this latest Toyota Prius
are nevertheless very appealing to your inner nerd. The most important two you
need to know are that it will now manage 72.4mpg and splutter out a mere 89g/km
of CO2. Or 70.6mpg and 92g/km in top-spec T Spirit models
on account of the bigger, 17-inch wheels. Even more impressively, the former
figures stay exactly the same on the urban cycle thanks to the electric hybrid
system.

If you like your hot hatches slippery rather than secure, the JCW
convertible might be the most entertaining little car on sale today. Yes, the
most powerful Mini cabrio ever is quick - 6.9 to 60mph is proper hot hatch pace
- but it's more the way the JCW handles itself on the road... or, rather, fails
to handle itself.

This is a hot cabrio from the old school: bury the throttle and feel the
front wheels squirm and wriggle as 210bhp ambitiously tries - and fails - to
plant itself on the road. It maintains something of a tenuous relationship with
grip, the JCW, leaving you twirling the wheel with reckless abandon and feeling
like a mildly camp driving hero.

Time to be blunt: the
Mini Convertible is possibly the best of the breed. OK, so the breed is a bit
marginal if you're talking hatch-based cuteness that has some semblance of
driver appeal - but the revised version of the Cooper S has a great many
talents all wrapped up in the kind of bizarrely fluffy image that usually peers
out from convivially placed Wellington boots.

The sprint takes seven
and a bit, the top speed is the thick end of 130mph and even though the version
II Convertible is still some 100kg heavier than its coupe brother, it still
steers, stops and goes with the kind of terrier-like verve that we've all come
to know and love.