BMW 3 Series review

There’s more leg room up front than you’ll find in the A4 or C-Class. We’re talking a couple of centimetres at the most, but that’s worth having if you’re really leggy. Anyone tall shouldn’t need to worry about the amount of head room, either. The 3 Series’ interior is also generously wide, so you can stretch out sideways as well as lengthways.

Storage space is pretty good, with a useful cubby under the centre armrest that has a USB-C socket inside. You also get partitioned door bins that help prevent loose items rolling around.

Compared to its premium-badged peers, the 3 Series has similar rear head room to the A4 but more leg room and more space all round than the C-Class. The 3 Series is also a better choice for three adults sitting side by side; they’ll have more shoulder room than they would in the A4 or C-Class.

However, this class of car includes whopping great chariots, such as the Skoda Superb and Volkswagen Passat, and the 3 Series can't match the space offered by those cars in the rear.

The standard manually adjustable front passenger’s seat doesn’t include adjustable lumbar support, but you can add that and electric front seat adjustment for a reasonable price.

All 3 Series variants come with versatile 40/20/40-split folding rear seats as standard, which you can fold down using the handy levers in the boot.

The 3 Series has a very serviceable luggage compartment. Like the A4's, it's a useable square shape, which proves slightly more useful for bulky objects than a C-Class's irregular sides. All three share the same capacity, though, so the differences aren’t huge. Should you need more space, as we’ve mentioned above, you can easily fold the rear seats in the 3 Series to leave a large, flat extended load bay, and while it’s no estate car (see our 3 Series Touring review if you want one of those), it’ll still manage buggies or a trip to the tip.

As we mentioned when discussing passenger space, the executive class includes such gargantuans as the Skoda Superb and Ford Mondeo, so if you need a real belter of a boot, look at those cars instead.