What are they like inside?

The official capacity figures suggest that the Skoda Superb Estate’s boot is the biggest but that’s not the whole story. Yes, it’s suitably enormous, and is by far the deepest of the three. However, the Ford Mondeo’s boot is both longer and wider, so is even more useful.

The Peugeot 508’s boot is pretty good, too, matching the Mondeo for depth, the Superb for length, and sitting somewhere between the two for width. However, it’s still the smallest here.

When you need to call upon all the cargo space your car can muster, the Mondeo makes life easiest. The rear seats fold down to leave a totally flat boot floor – although you do need to pop the seat bases out of the way first. There’s also no load lip to lift things over, so you can simply slide in heavy items.

The Superb, on the other hand, has a big lip that you’ll need to lift heavy items over, and when you fold the rear seats down there’s a step in the floor. As in the Mondeo, you need to flip up the seat bases before folding the backrests.

The 508 makes dropping the rear seats the easiest – you just tug a lever in the boot and the seats flop down themselves, whereas the release catch sits on top of the rear-seat backrest in the other two cars. There’s no need to move the 508’s seat bases out of the way, either, which means it has the longest boot in two-seat mode. It also means that the backrests don’t lie down completely flat.

All three cars have plenty of space for passengers, especially so up front. Each car also comes with bags of seat and steering wheel adjustment, to help you find a comfortable driving position. Move to the rear and even the smallest of the trio, the Peugeot, has enough leg room.

The Mondeo gives passengers a fair bit more space to stretch out, but it still looks a bit meagre next to the super-sized Skoda.

All three cars feel like they’ve been put together with some care, from quality materials. You have to delve pretty deep into the lower reaches of each interior before you find any below-par materials.

What’s more, all three dashboards look and feel expensive and are clutter-free. Additionally, all three have sensible, easy-to-navigate layouts and clearly marked switchgear, so they’re as easy to use as they are on the eye.