Ford C-MAX 1.8 Range Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Ford C-MAX 1.8 range
Prices: £15,317-£17,275 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 7E-8E
Emissions: 170g/km
Performance: Max Speed 119mph / 0-60mph 10.6s
Fuel Consumption: (combined) 39.2mpg
Safety: Twin front, side and curtain airbags, ABS, EBA
Dimensions: Length/Width/Heightmm 4333/1825/1558

TAKE IT TO THE MAX

Our Rating: 7.3 / 10

Positioned in a competitive market, Ford’s C-MAX 1.8 has a tough task on its hands. Does it shape up? Andy Enright decides…

Playing catch up can sometimes prove very difficult. When the mini-MPV market first boomed, Ford stood back and watched, confident that sales of these curious little boxes would be a passing fad. Buyers would soon realise that something Focus shaped or Mondeo sized made a far more satisfactory alternative than the frumpier lines of a mini-MPV. They were wrong. Six years after Renault popularised the genre with the Scenic, Ford responded with the C-MAX.

To keep this car current, Ford have updated the car with sassier styling in recent times but the essentials remain the same. There’s a choice of 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0-litre power whether you opt for diesel or petrol. It’s the 1.8-litre petrol car that we take a look at here. Powered by a 125PS four-cylinder engine, it’s usefully quicker than cars like the 1.6-litre Volkswagen Touran against which it competes pricewise and the engine is both smooth and blessed with a decent slug of torque – invaluable for hauling a fully laden vehicle uphill. It will zip from standstill to 60mph in a respectable 10.6 seconds and keep going until it runs out of steam at 119mph. Despite the impressive power and torque figures churned out by the 1.8-litre engine, it manages to return some very respectable economy figures. A combined fuel consumption figure of 39.2 mpg makes it more economical than its less powerful 1.6-litre counterparts from Volkswagen and Renault. Factor in CO2 figures of just 170g/km and it sounds like a winner already.

There is a caveat, though, and for some buyers it will rule the C-MAX out of contention. Whereas the Volkswagen Touran can be specified with seven seats and the Renault Grand Scenic is also thus equipped, the C-MAX only offers room for five. This raises a perplexing question. Just as the Ford Fusion found little favour with buyers who couldn’t really see what it offered over and above a normal Fiesta, there may well be a significant proportion of potential C-MAX customers who can’t see the point of a car that seats no more bodies than a cooking Focus hatch.

Ford’s marketing department remains utterly convinced that there’s an untapped market for vehicles that offer five seats with MPV-style headroom and versatility but which still offer keen driving dynamics and styling that doesn’t resemble a downsized burger van. Think about how we use our cars for a moment. Many of us rarely even use the back seats for anything but shopping bags and jackets. If you’ve got a family in tow, you may well need four or even five seats but if you seriously need seven seats, it makes sense to go with the additional carrying capacity of a full sized MPV like Ford’s S-MAX or Galaxy models.

If the exterior may still be a little underwhelming, the C-MAX more than makes up for it with the ideas factory that is the cabin. Ford’s rear seat flexibility system really is the ace in the C-MAX hole. A 40-20-40 "tip and tumble" rear seat sees the centre section flip rearwards into the luggage compartment, leaving the remaining two seats to slide diagonally along a runner towards the centre of the car, giving unprecedented levels of space for four. Entry-level models get a less versatile version of the system but higher up the range the all-singing, all-dancing set-up is standard. The rear seats are set high, which does away with the usual mini-MPV complaint of virtually sitting on the floor and means that the kids get a great view forward. The flipside to this is that if you’re regularly carting taller passengers about, that sloping roofline may cause a few grumbles.

With 100mm of extra legroom and 60mm of additional shoulder room over a standard Focus, space is pretty generous in the back of the C-MAX. Even in the standard three-abreast bench position there’s plenty of room, offering 946mm of legroom and 582 litres of luggage compartment space. Remove the rear seats altogether and there’s a monstrous 1,692 litres available. The fascia design of the C-MAX reflects the exterior lines in its calm maturity. The riot of bisecting lines, angles and arcs