Kentish Express Ashford & District
Family can be cool
The new Ford Grand C-Max places more emphasis on driver enjoyment than most ditchwater-dull compact seven-seaters, as Matt Kimberley reports
At long last the C-Max, Ford of Europe’s thirdbest-selling model, has been brought into line with the One Ford programme, so there are new looks, new technologies and a simplified cabin. This, the seven-seat Grand C-Max, has had the same upgrades. Smaller revisions have made their way in, too, like the reinstatement of a spare wheel in lieu of the (generally useless) tyre-repair kit. with three or four siblings, you wouldn’t mind being bussed to school in this. There is one overwhelming and lasting impression from a drive in the Grand C-Max. And that is just how pleasantly well connected it feels to the road. It feels solidly engineered and good to drive without having to be driven fast. Even if you can’t put your finger on the technical reasons, you’ll notice it. Ford has always had good form on the driving front and the seating position is spot-on. It’s easy to get on with the C-Max in both its body styles. The cabin has loads of convenient touches, though, like a central bottle bin that you can get your whole forearm into, a rack of adjustable grips to hold different sizes of can or bottle, a proper glovebox and plenty of connection ports for charging electronics. Improved residual values will, says Ford, lead to cheaper PCP finance contracts for end users, although that remains to be seen when it arrives in showrooms in the summer. The pricing structure centres on a core of likely volumesellers between £21,000 and £25,000, making it a relatively affordable route into a well-
specified seven-seater. Families are the target market. Generous parents with only two kids will appreciate the ability to ferry extra young ’uns around when needed, and productive mums and dads with limited parking space at home will appreciate the Grand C-Max’s neat dimensions.