We’ve reached the half-way mark of our 12-month test of the Kia Ceed and I’m pleased to report that it continues to impress.

Unlike the Mazda6, which had to visit the dealer recently, there have been no reliability issues. But this does come with the caveat that the Ceed has only done about 7,000 miles to date.

However, its average mpg figure has left me wondering whether I need eco-driver training. When Andy Brady drove it for a few weeks, the average mpg went up from 52.2mpg to 56.6mpg.

I’ve been back in it a few months and it’s down to 54. That doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise it’s 20mpg below the official combined figure.

One explanation is my route to work is a combination of urban and dual carriageway and is typically less than half an hour. Andy was doing a longer run of about an hour and rarely going above 50mph.

Of course, he could just be a more fuel-efficient driver than me. It may be time for another colleague to take the Ceed for a spin to see how they fare.

Another thing that has baffled me about the Ceed is its name. I assumed ‘Ceed’ was simply Kia’s marketing bods trying to create an alternative spelling for ‘seed’.

Not so. It is an acronym, with rather unglamourous origins. The ‘CE’ stands for European Economic Community (also known as CEE) and the ‘ED’ for ‘European Design’. Kia dropped one of the E’s and replaced it with an apostrophe.

Just to confuse you further, we don’t use Kia’s intended grammatical aberration (cee'd) as the production editors (rightly) deemed it superfluous and the lower case C is replaced with an upper case one because the Ceed is a proper noun.