Kia Picanto safety is not as good as it should be especially as the new model comes with an all-new bodyshell using higher strength steel and reinforced mid-section and rear pillars.

Standard Kia Picanto safety kit includes six airbags, stability control, ISOFIX child-seat mounting anchor points, front seat-belt pre-tensioners and hill-start assist. There’s also a system which detects ‘emergency’ braking and flashes the hazard lights three times to warn drivers behind.

The new Picanto has been awarded four out of five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests, an improvement on the last car’s poor rating of three stars. The car scored well for both adult and child occupant protection, although it fared less strongly on the pedestrian safety front.

Kia Picanto practicality is very good. Available as both a three- and five-door hatchback, the Picanto has ample headroom in the front and the back and although the car is 60mm longer than its predecessor, legroom suffers when sitting in the rear seats.

The tailgate is fairly wide and the boot sill low enough to make loading easy, but there isn’t a huge amount of usable space behind the rear seats.

Kia says there’s capacity for 200 litres – up from 157 litres on the previous car – but because of the the way it’s packaged you’ll struggle to squeeze bigger objects in there. Despite the limited space in the boot, Kia Picanto practicality does trump the Fiat 500 that offers 185 litres of luggage room, although the Ford Ka just tops the Kia with 224 litres of boot space.

The rear seats fold down in the conventional 60:40 configuration to provide 870 litres of maximum boot space. There are enough cubby holes in the cabin for your loose change and the glove box is of a good size too.