Car of the Year Awards 2025: Best family car interior
There are several types of family car, but here we’re looking at traditional hatchbacks: large enough to be practical, yet compact enough to be easy and enjoyable to drive...
BMW 1 Series 120 M Sport
On an EasyJet flight to Fuerteventura, with the family in tow and surrounded by excitable kids, you might be tempted to don a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, close your eyes and imagine that you were on a private Learjet bound for Barbados.
It’s all about escapism – and so is the BMW 1 Series. No other family car has an interior that gives you a taste of the high life like the 1 Series’. Even in the company of its premium rivals, the Audi A3 and Mercedes A-Class, the 1 Series is on another level for plushness.
The much cheaper Toyota Corolla may be robust inside, but the 1 Series brings impeccable attention to detail and materials that reward every touch – including genuine aluminium details, not the silver plastic the A-Class serves up.
It doesn’t just look pretty, either; it also works. The driving position is bang on, with loads of adjustment for the steering wheel and seats, and forward visibility is hard to fault. The 1 Series beats the A3 and A-Class for space, too; tall folk will have more leg room in the back (although the Skoda Scala offers even more). In the 1 Series, even a trip to the shops is first-class travel.
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