Not the most inspiring, but perfectly pleasant

The new model benefits from improvements to engine efficiency and specification, adding further appeal to the German company's smallest SUV.

With the arrival of the 2015 Audi Q3, it seems apt to take a moment to consider the contributing factors in this German car maker's unstoppable rise to the top. This is, after all, a brand that was selling fewer than 20,000 cars per year in the UK in the early 1990s, compared with 142,000 in 2013.

So why such strong growth? Most obviously, there has been a boom in the popularity of premium cars, so that where once big hatchbacks from the mainstream manufacturers were king, now we all want German cars with fancy badges and soft-touch dashboards (and few do a soft-touch dashboard quite like Audi).