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Top one hundred Cars 2016: Top five Mid-size Estates
1 BMW 3-series Touring
For many, the BMW 3-series is the ultimate drive: space, luxury, spectacle — it’s all the car you’ll ever need. The entire 3-series has been updated with more efficient engines and reworked interiors; sat nav is standard across the range too.
The estate version is most practical — and it still looks sleek. Fitted with four-wheel drive (or, in BMW-speak, xDrive), it treats with razor-sharp precision and should keep you motoring whenever winter weather arrives for real.
Two Mercedes C-class Estate
It’s arguably the most stylish estate on UK roads — plus one of the most convenient — and has a well-built cabin. The driving practice can be described in one word: slick, whether you’re talking about the engine — petrol or diesel — rail or gearchanges.
You do pay for some of the swoopy style in boot space, but there’s room for a holiday’s worth of suitcases. The boot is powered on every model in the range.
Three Skoda Octavia Estate
The Octavia is one of the best family cars you can buy at any money. It’s got a spacious cabin and a cavernous boot and it rails beautifully without getting all wallowing in the corners.
Under the bonnet are some of the most efficient engines around, for both petrol and diesel buyers, and the automatic and manual gearboxes are excellent. You’ll notice that this write-up is straightforward, to the point and without frills. Much like the Skoda Octavia, in fact.
Four Ford Concentrate Estate
Whether it’s fitted with a little 1-litre engine or the growling 247bhp 2-litre block in the ST hot hatch, the Concentrate is good joy to drive – which helps to disguise the fact that the car is now six years old and leisurely being overtaken by rivals with superior convenience, better technology and more space.
The last of these attributes is why the Concentrate is best as an estate — buyers could find the hatchback’s boot a bit petite. A midlife facelift has improved the cabin, keeping the Ford in contention.
Five Honda Civic Tourer
It may look as if it has been half eroded, but the Civic is a solid buy for drivers who value build quality, convenience and a warehouse-size boot — at 1,668 litres, the Civic’s one is one hundred sixty eight litres fatter than the BMW’s.
The quirky two-level dashboard still seems to put form before function, but in all other respects this is an utterly practical car, which, when fitted with a diesel engine is so frugal that it has a theoretical range of eight hundred seventeen miles from its 50-litre fuel tank, and is exempt from road tax.
