The days of the Volvo being the biggest estate and the antique dealer's dream have long gone - whilst the 245 is rightly revered, they haven't got any bigger since and both Vectra and Mondeo outstripped it, increased in size to make up for the loss of Omega and Scorpio respectively.

And for those wanting volume, rather than length, then SUVs and MPVs fitted the bill easily.

Volvo estates have always been more suitable for long thin loads; I remember years ago fitting two large kettledrums into the back of my Renault 20, neither of which would fit into a Volvo 245. The tailgate is vertical and therefore smaller. The drums would doubtless have gone into your Focus, as they would into my current Octavia.

In fairmess to Volvo, I'm pretty sure they would have gone into an XC60 or XC90. But as an all-round estate, you can't beat the Skoda Superb.

Volvo has changed its target market. Although as I'm on my second V60, I'll say this: many non-owners criticise the load area for being too small, and it IS smaller than the load area in the Mondeo IV estate's that I owned previously.

Yet when we went on holiday in the UK with 2 adults and 3 teenagers in the Mondy, the boot was full of clobber.

The V60's boot swallows exactly the same clobber for the 5 of us for holidays without leaving anything behind or putting stuff in footwells. This is because the boot area is well designed, with practical things like a retractable cargo net etc, so you can load to headrest height and still secure the boot's contents.