Build quality has long been seen as a traditional strength of the Audi brand, and our time so far with the A3 Sportback has done nothing to challenge that perception.

In the past couple of weeks, it has passed the 10,000-mile mark, roughly one-eighth of the miles a car may be expected to cover while on a fleet.

So far there are no obvious signs of wear and tear in the cabin which, although it is still early days in a typical fleet lifecycle, is a good sign for its appeal at de-fleet time.

Its short-term appeal has also continued to be high, as it is proving a classy and refined way to travel.

A couple of weekends before Christmas the A3 Sportback was pressed into action as a four-wheeled Santa's sleigh for a 600-mile round trip to visit the Irish side of my family in Dublin.

This saw the car laden with presents, as well as my parents,  and it coped admirably with any demands we made of it.

Both my parents were happy with the comfort and room they had, although the shape of the boot meant putting a box or two on the rear seat: it seemed quite narrow, while a high boot lip meant that loading and unloading a heavy parcel was more awkward than expected.

Other gripes are minor ones: the spoked wheels are a pain to clean (although they look great when done), while my iPod is too old to connect to the A3's media system.

The latter complaint is not the car's fault, but has led me to use my phone as an MP3 player and pair it to the media system using Bluetooth.

Like all other operations using the media system, this was straightforward to do and the controls intuitive enough to not need to refer to the instruction manual.

Average test economy has remained fairly consistent at between 57mpg and 59mpg per tankful, which is a long way short of the official figure of 74.3mpg.