Best Small Car 2021

Welcome to carsales’ Best Small Car 2021 mega-test, where you get to sit back and soak up the rewards of our hard work in assembling and dissecting a short-list of candidates from a super-competitive field of popular models on offer from all the major mainstream brands.

Now it’s the time to put them through their paces, testing nine of Australia's top-selling small cars against more than 100 criteria across five key areas of assessment to determine which model is best.

We don’t have to tell you just how important small cars remain in Australia today – you’ve shown just how relevant they are, year after year, with sales that keep them among the five best-selling categories in the marketplace.

Replacing homegrown large cars as the nation's most popular new-vehicle type before being overtaken by 4x4 utes just over five years ago, small cars are now being squeezed by the tidal wave of excellent new SUVs and small crossovers landing on our shores, forcing some brands to abandon the segment and others to focus simply on high-spec or performance models.

Gone are the days when the headline price for a new small car was $19,990 drive-away, and further up the line ‘premium’ is no longer is a byword for crushed velour seats, thick carpeting or alloy wheels.

While there are new and well-established high-performance small cars attracting loads of attention at the top-end of the class – the Subaru WRX, Ford Focus ST, Honda Civic Type R, Volkswagen Golf GTI and, more recently, the Hyundai i30 N, to name a fistful – in this mega-test we’re looking at the more mainstream top-shelf models.

Even so, for all but the Mazda3 G25 Astina and Skoda Scala 110TSI Signature, the models on test have been pitched as sporty to some degree – in looks, at least, if not outright performance.

While many small cars are also offered in sedan and – increasingly less commonly – wagon form, hatchbacks represent at least 60 per cent of the small-car segment and private buyers continue to prefer high-end variants 'loaded with all the fruit'. So for consistency's sake, our nine contenders are all of the premium hatch genre now available from all the major car-makers.

Befitting their premium status and in a market where the manual transmission is almost extinct, we have selected the automatic variant over the manual where such choice still exists.

Model lifecycles are only getting shorter – the oldest car here is the Honda Civic RS, which first arrived in 2016 as a sedan, with the hatchback launching in 2017. Honda’s new-generation Civic hatch is due to arrive in Australia later this year (the sedan isn’t coming), but the Japanese brand is yet to announce local pricing and specs, let alone give us the opportunity to drive it.

Also now four years into their current generation, but receiving updates along the way, are the Hyundai i30 N Line Premium and Subaru Impreza 2.0i-S, while the Kia Cerato GT and the Toyota Corolla ZR both arrived in 2018 but have likewise been upgraded – the Kia as recently as June this year.

The Ford Focus ST-Line and Mazda3 G25 Astina made their local debut two years ago, while the Skoda Scala Signature launched last year as a replacement for the Rapid.

The newest model is the Mk8 version of the Volkswagen Golf, tested here in R-Line trim after docking just a couple of months ago.

As with all our mega-tests, more than 100 individual elements are assessed across on five key judging areas – safety, technology, comfort and convenience, driving performance and ownership costs – before we tally the scores to name carsales’ Best Small Car 2021, .

Any car’s safety equipment is mostly unseen and much of it you will hopefully never need, including in the small-car class where buyers are no longer treated like second-class citizens when it comes to active and passive safety tech.

These days all manufacturers bless at least the premium versions of their volume-selling C-segment models with all of the safety tech found in their largest cars and SUVs. In particular, advanced driver assist safety features relying on complex electronics are now the norm across the industry and small cars are no exception.

Because small cars have such a broad customer base, from first-time drivers to families with young children to retirees, a wide spectrum of buyers can rightly expect to receive the latest potentially life-saving safety technologies to keep them and those dear to them safe.

All nine cars tested here tick all of the key boxes when it comes to occupant protection and driver-assist features, but while some cars deliver genuine safety innovation, others are less impressive in their protection armoury.

More on small car safety here

Whether it's a premium small car or a big one, you want it to have the latest technologies that make driving convenient and relaxing, and you want it to keep you connected.

While virtually all new cars now have Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, infotainment and multimedia technology is still developing at a rapid pace.

Some manufacturers are early adopters of such tech, while others have stayed the conservative course. Being able to wirelessly charge or connect your device, or to unlock the features afforded by an embedded SIM are not a given in this segment.

As the showcase grade of each model line, the vehicles on test here represent the best technology available from each brand. Yet not all small cars are as well-equipped as you might expect.

More on small car technology here

You won’t see bespoke high-end lacquered timber or carbon-fibre inlays fitted to a premium small car priced at about $40,000, but there is an expectation that buying the top-of-the-range model brings worthy additions in areas of comfort and convenience.

Obvious luxury features such as a sunroof and leather seats are not a given across the premium small car spectrum, nor for that matter are automatic high beam headlights or rain-sensing wipers.

As with many other segments, fast-developing technology in the car industry results in more recent models being able to introduce innovative features that existing competitors lack.

There are more differences in standard equipment here than you might expect.

More on small car comfort and convenience here

Ever-increasing levels of sophistication and the enduring compact and lightweight nature of the cars in this segment should provide the basis for very good performance, handling and ride comfort.

Indeed, some of the small cars here have a sporting bent that makes driver engagement one of their unique selling points.

Yet driving enjoyment, refinement and all-round comfort for all occupants, whether trundling around the suburbs or heading out of town on the highway, comes back to fundamental areas of powertrain and chassis design, engineering and tuning.

Accomplished small cars that succeed in delivering effortless performance and a fine balance between ride and handling will generally be safer and less tiring to drive.

Without claiming to be a hot hatch, a small car can be fun and engaging without detracting from critical elements that make it a user-friendly all-rounder, such as comfort and versatility.

Despite adhering to the same design concept, all of the small cars evaluated here deliver distinctly different styles of driving performance. Some are simply more successful than others at striking a good balance.

More on small car driving performance here

Just because you're buying a small car doesn’t mean all of them in the mainstream category cost about the same to own and operate.

Fortunately, these days there are multiple ways to establish what you’re likely to be up for before you sign up for a new car.

Some car-makers provide peace of mind with longer factory warranties than others, in some cases also with roadside assistance thrown in for free.

Dealer servicing costs was once a very opaque area, but now capped-price servicing provides some certainty, replacement tyre costs are much easier to calculate in advance too.

Depreciation costs are also clearer than before, so you can calculate with some assurance your small car’s future value when the lease is up or when the time comes to sell.

What a small car costs to service, how much it depreciates, the length of the warranty and what, if any, complimentary roadside assistance is included can be very different among the brands represented here.

More on small car ownership costs here

Now it’s time to name our Best Small Car for 2021.

Best Small Car 2021 contenders:
Ford Focus ST-Line
Honda Civic RS
Hyundai i30 N Line Premium
Kia Cerato GT
Mazda3 G25 Astina
Skoda Scala Signature
Subaru Impreza 2.0i-S
Toyota Corolla ZR
Volkswagen Golf R-Line