BMW X1 sDrive 20d SE (6 speed) £24,205

I’m still undecided about the looks of this car. Are they just bold, or is it a disaster? A bit of this and a bit of that all stuck together. If so, then I know how it feels – and that’s on a good day…

However, despite my quandary about its appearance, it still made me feel like a BMW should make you feel. Special. Luxuriating in the quality, style (yes it does have style) and sheer poshness (just shows how un-posh I am) while I was driving it, it certainly makes you feel good about yourself.

And on top of all this, it does have a practical side. It’s comfortable, has a great driving position and a boot that can swallow up huge amounts of goodies! So with that lovely mix of practicality and image, I felt I was using it to the best of its abilities.

As I sped up the M1 for lunch in Woburn with my lover, a huge shopping load discreetly hidden in the boot, with smaller, more expensive purchases carefully hidden in the space beneath the flat loading floor the car and I looked a million dollars. “In your dreams”, I hear you say. So true. However, I didn’t look too bad for a woman of my age and a lunch date was with my husband. Car and driver fitted in well at the country pub, even if it did take my husband a few seconds to realise it was me waving madly at him as I pulled up outside the restauran

But looking through the restaurant’s windows I did have to admit again that it was an odd looking vehicle Although its looks had grown on me with every mile I drove that might have been the lovely driving experience influencing my thoughts. It has a very long bonnet and the roof seems somewhat squashed. I feel as if the whole thing needs to be pumped up a bit and shortened – but then we’d have an X3, or an X5. It’s a problem.

So where does it fit in with BMW’s line up and why is it needed? BMW say it’s their first compact SUV, being more affordable than other BMW models. It’s not an off-roader, although it claims to be able to cope with rougher terrain that your average car. There again, there is nothing average about hits car, with its looks, great fuel economy (over 50 mpg) and low CO2 emission (139 g/km) and the first X model with the fabulous stop/start function which gives a 3% improvement in fuel economy and is such fun to use, frightening friends and family alike.

It will turn heads, but whether due to admiring glances or sheer curiosity it’s hard to know. I was sad to see it go at the end of the week. And one of the advantages to having rather heavy steering (something I only fully discovered when forced to drive back and forward in front of the camera, endlessly doing u-bends and reversing) was that it definitely tightened up my biceps. Not something I would necessarily look for in a car, but hey, got to fight those bat wings somehow!