MUDDY boot marks all over the seats in your new Renault? Don't panic; simply unzip the seat covers and pop 'em in the washing machine.

Need somewhere to stow the filthy wellies after a winter woodland walk? Simple; open the boot and flip over the floor panel so the rubberised underside faces upward, and laughs at the muck.

Both features are present in the new Captur in the hope it give the car a family friendly feel with just a little edge of adventure as well; ever so slightly jungle explorer on the school run.

Built on the same underpinnings as the latest Renault Clio, the Capture is a little longer, with more space in the back and built a bit higher off the ground and just one of the new contenders in a part of the car market expanding at record pace.

We can't get enough of vehicles in the 'crossover' segment; a mix of MPV practicality and SUV ruggedness with the likely running costs of a humble hatch.

Renault hopes it builds on those virtues by giving owners the chance to make their Captur an expression of their personality with lots of choices for exterior paint and interior finish. The test car looked smart in orange with a black roof; inside it's almost solidly black with just touches of orange to lighten things.

The Captur range starts at £12,495 for a version with a 1.0-litre petrol engine and tops out at £18,895 for a diesel-powered model with all the goodies and the prospect of 60mpg-plus with a little restraint.

Costing only slight less (£200 down, to be precise) sits the car seen here, with a petrol engine promising more performance but worse fuel economy. My 700 miles stint at the wheel returned 43mpg on the trip computer.

If that's less than you'd expect from its official consumption figure (better than 52mpg), the automatic gearbox might be partly to blame. But only partly; you can't have this 120 horsepower petrol engine in a Captur without automatic gears, but they are of the modern dual clutch type, which should make only a marginal dent in economy.

Losing the clutch pedal makes for an undeniably more relaxed way of moving about on our crowded roads, with mostly seamless gearchanges and only the occasional reluctance to find the next gear in an instant when you're in a hurry.

Not that the Captur is a car to rush. Its taller build means it leans a bit more than a hatch on the bends and its at its best on straighter stretches, where the fine ride can also be better appreciated.

Sitting near the top of the Captur tree, the test car came loaded with goodies, including big alloy wheels, rear parking sensors and door mirrors that fold electrically.

It also had £450 worth of R-Link multimedia system which, among other features, read out my emails in an odd synthesised voice as I sat in the supermarket car park. You have to be parked to read your messages, which may be no bad thing.

There's even a screen to tell you how economically you've been driving. Mine said 81 after the journey to the supermarket. Which I'll take as a compliment...