While it’s not yet been crash-tested by the experts at Euro NCAP, we fully expect BMW 2 Series Gran Tourer safety to be ranked highly, scoring a five-star rating.

Complementing the strong safety cell is a raft of all-round airbags, emergency city braking to help reduce the impact of an accident in the first place, automatic lights and wipers and two ISOFIX child seat mounting points on the middle row bench.

A further welcome addition is the Emergency Call function which will automatically pinpoint the car’s location and contact the emergency services outlining the severity of the impact.

Many of the remaining safety features such as camera-supported adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and automatic main beam are optional, though. However, because many of these features are pre-installed in the car and effectively need switching on through BMW’s Connected Drive system, even if the first owner chooses not to have them activated, subsequent owners can.

Ranked against the company’s other cars BMW 2 Series Gran Tourer practicality is second to none, but compared to others in this sector it’s lacking a few convenient touches.

Chief among these is the middle row bench seat, where many rivals offer three individual chairs for increased flexibility.

While the 2 Series Gran Tourer’s seat back is split 40:20:40, the narrowness of the centre position limits the BMW’s effectiveness as a seven-seater.

It’s not all bad news though as it slides back and forth to vary the legroom to boot space ratio and there’re storage areas under the seat, as well as sizeable door bins, plus picnic tables on the front seat backs, too.

Although the rearmost row of seats are designed primarily for children in this size of MPV, the restricted head and legroom more or less guarantees adults and taller teens won’t fit in the back of the 2 Series Gran Tourer.

Those who do fit will benefit from elasticated straps on the sides to hold various child-related detritus, while the seats themselves are raised and lowered easily with a small, plastic lever.

BMW doesn’t quote a luggage space figure for the 2 Series Gran Tourer in seven-seater mode, but it doesn’t look too dissimilar to other cars in this class. For convenience the luggage cover stows neatly away under the boot floor.

In five-seater mode the BMW offers up to 560 litres of space, which compares well for the Ford Grand C-Max’s 475 litres, but lags behind the Citroen Grand C4 Picasso’s 793-litre capacity.

It’s a similar story when all the rear seats are tumbled to create a near-flat floor, with the 2 Series Gran Tourer offering 1,820 litres beating the Ford (1,742 litres) but not the colossal Citroen (2,181 litres).