This was always going to be an interesting review – and possibly one that costs me a lot.

You see, I currently drive a Renault Captur. Not the most exciting car, and in fairness one that I’ll be switching fairly soon, but when I took out the PCP on it, we were torn between this and a similarly priced Ford EcoSport.

Reviewing the EcoSport there-fore means that I may be proved wrong in my preference for the Captur, so there really is a lot riding on this. Spoiler alert: I was wrong. At least partly.

Before I go into why I was wrong (this time) I’ll talk about the Ford itself. I’m never all that sure where these small SUV type cars are aimed – bigger than a Fiesta, smaller than a Focus, but taller at the same time…

It achieved what Ford often delivers

There’s clearly a market for them, and Ford is particularly adept at finding niches in the market and exploiting them really quite well, so I’ve decided not to worry too much about where it sits in the line up, rather just take it at face value and see what it’s like.

In short, it’s really quite impressive. Yes, it’s powered by a 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine, but Ford has always managed to get a lot out of these small engines, and while it’s not what you’d call fast, it’s nippy enough and, paired with the 6-speed manual gearbox, it achieved what Ford often delivers.

It was, for want of a better word, eager. And a lot more fun than a small engined car such as this should be.

If the engine and gearbox are a winner, and in this they are, then usually it’ll take a big faux pas from the engineering team to mess something up. Perhaps, given its ride height, the down-side would be body roll in the corners? Nope. Pretty stable all things considered, and without excessive power to contend with, there were no real surprises. I remember driving a Scenic for the first time and almost feeling seasick on roundabouts.

The interior was perfectly acceptable too – not too luxurious, but for £24k, you’re not going to get swathes of leather and inset aluminium. That said, I certainly had no complaints, and nothing felt particularly cheap.

I had one issue, which is actually quite embarrassing, and probably more a reflection on me than the car. It took me far longer than it should have to figure out how to open the boot.

A trio of issues

Yep, I got stumped by one of the most simple actions, and all because I forgot that the EcoSport has a side opening boot and therefore the ‘handle’ was disguised in the light cluster. But the odd opening mechanism wasn’t the only downside to the boot, in fact it was part of a trio of issues.

The second was that being a side-opener, you need to leave a good amount of space to fully open the boot. And thirdly, the boot space wasn’t fantastic, which in itself was my saving grace. Because while we both preferred the EcoSport to my Captur, the French model does win on practicality and an expandable boot thanks to a sliding rear seating mechanism.

But on interior, performance, looks and literally everything else, the EcoSport wins. Which means I lose.