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• MINI rival is spacious inside
• More practical than the three-door Audi A1
• Extra headroom and legroom

Families wanting a premium supermini with five doors need to look no further because the Audi A1 Sportback seems to have all the bases covered. The two extra doors make it easy for children to enter and exit. The five-door A1 has 11mm of additional rear head-room than the three-door A1 while it also has 13mm of additional rear shoulder room. There are plenty of cubbies to keep loose change in and the door pockets and glovebox are all of a decent size.

You may be surprised by the size of the boot: with the rear seats in place the Audi A1 Sportback has 270 litres of luggage capacity. That’s 10 litres larger than the boot of a MINI Clubman. Fold the seats and the carrying capacity is 920 litres, but that’s 10 litres short of that in the Clubman.

Audi A1 Sportback safety

• Audi A1 is a five-star car for 2010 standards
• Core structure shared with many safe cars
• Technology good for the time

Five stars should be the order of the day make the Audi A1 Sportback safety top-notch. The A1 in the three-door guise received five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests and the Audi A1 Sportback shares the same engineering and technology. Standard equipment includes airbags, ABS and ESP.

In 2015 a secondary collision brake assist system was added, helping to reduce the risks of skidding and additional collisions as a result of an accident.