• Cheap plastics everywhere you look…
• … but it’s a cheap car, so it’s forgivable
• Suspension finds every bump in the road

How is the quality and layout?

Quality is quite poor. The cabin plastics are cheap and flimsy – the shiny trims for the infotainment system and gear selector look like they were sourced from off-brand kitchenware, and we reckon you could break the door cards with one hand. The dashboard doesn’t feel particularly solid, either. We could move the air vent stack a few millimetres in every direction. Just think how much that’ll rattle about once the car has been through a few owners.

Sadly, our Tivoli test car also seemed to have had a few rattles pre-installed at the factory. It had only covered around 3,000 miles, but there was already an irritating jangle coming from the rear passenger-side door card. Worse still, it came and went as we sped up and slowed down.

The Tivoli’s cabin is a dreary place to be, too. If we haven’t already made it clear, everything looks and feels cheap. It doesn’t have the same rough charm as some other affordable family SUVs, such as the Dacia Duster or Suzuki S-Cross. Both of those cars are made from cheap materials, but at least they’ve been nailed together properly.

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SsangYong organised the Tivoli’s interior well, though. The climate controls are on a physical panel on the centre console, rather than buried in a sub-menu on the infotainment system and there’s a handy collection of buttons to operate the various driver assistance feature to the right of the wheel.

Remember how much the Tivoli costs, too. Prices start from around £18,000, which is cracking value when you consider that the amount of standard equipment you get. The equivalent Duster costs about the same, but you’ll have to do without features like heated seats, a heated steering wheel and an auto-dimming rear-view mirror.

Infotainment and technology

SsangYong has shaved some costs here, too. You get an eight-inch touchscreen as standard, but it doesn’t feature a built-in sat-nav system. You need to buy a wire for your smartphone and use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto instead. Pre-loaded TomTom navigation is available, but not until you arrive at the range-topping £21,625 Ultimate Nav model.

The screen isn’t particularly crisp and, when you’re not using your smartphone’s interface, the menu design is hideous. It looks like one of BMW’s first attempts at an infotainment system from the early 2000s. We’re sure it would have wowed audiences from two decades ago, but it’s off the pace now.

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Our test car was fitted with the optional 10.25-inch digital gauge cluster. It’s a useful tool, with a configurable menu in its centre for things like fuel economy and driver assistance equipment but, like the rest of the technology on the Tivoli, it looks a bit dated.

Comfort

• Seats are fairly supportive…
• … but the suspension is too harsh
• Quite a lot of wind noise

It gets worse, because the Tivoli isn’t particularly comfortable, either. The seats aren’t bad, but the dampers are too firm – and that means you get jostled around a lot. At low speeds on rough tarmac, the Tivoli can get into a rhythm that will have you nodding like a bobblehead, and you’ll brace for potholes on faster roads because there isn’t enough give in the suspension to absorb the shock.

Despite this, road noise is reasonably well suppressed, and the engine keeps quiet when you’re not asking a lot of it. However, this is balanced out by the wind whistling around the door seals. Just look at the price again. Now ask yourself if you could live with it.