USED Ford S-Max MPV (06 - )

My car

Our relationship with our S-Max was a love/hate relationship which has resulted in our seperation (we sold it). The car was suprisingly fun and rather sporty to drive (for an MPV) as we expected it to handle like a brick. It was well kitted out and was extremeley spacious which was the main attraction. Our family holidays with the five of us were easy as the boot is huge and the second row of seats is really spacious. The main problem we had was it just wouldn't start consistently. It suffered from what appears to be a common S-Max fault of an 'unknown battery drain.' We had replacement batteries, alternators to no avail and when this made no difference we were then faced with an absolutley shocking poor performance from our local Ford garage and the Ford Technical (read Ford Incompetent) Dept. We had weeks of time wasted to and fro'ing from garages and repetitive phone calls and Ford never managed to fix the fault. Other probelms we had included the door window disappearing into the door and not coming out, broken air conditioning system and also bits falling of the CD/audio system. In summary, a huge sporty MPV, it's just a shame it didn't start and the build quality was abysmal.

My car

I have recently changed car having had the S Max for a year and covered 36k miles. My impressions: extreemly dissapointed with the 1.8 diesel felt like I had gone back 15 years to diesels of old not a patch on the Vauxhall diesels. When i first got the car and was getting familiar with it I stalled it several times in first gear, there is virtually no torque and the gear is almost redundant you have to change almost as soon as you get to about 15mph it sounds like a tractor engine, cant believe Ford let this out as their staple engine. Once on the move its fine. Just to mention the engine got better after about 20k seemed to loosen up. Engine virdict dissapointing. Cabin: Great, lots of room, airy and nice dash, radio a bit iffy was never satisfied with the music sound quality and there is a strange interferance cut in now and again. Seats great tons of room in the back, never used 3rd row so cant comment. I always had a lot of equipment in the boot as I used the car for work did not take long before the plastic was marked everywhere you just need to look at it and it marks.The look of the car: found this rather curiouse, sometimes it would look nice and sleek other times rather awkward and frumpy could never put my finger on it think Ford could have been more adventurouse with the back.Well that sit excuse my spelling as watching world cup footie whilst doing this. Good car 1.8 diesel not good sometimes looks ,sometimes looks like a kids and shopper car and not the "S"

My car

Had this a while now. At first I was a bit worried about the small engine but in reality it is plenty of torgue and is quite refined. Good... Handles very well for a 'bus' but is no match for my F2 day car (not kidding) LOL. Rides the UK roads well and is practical and economic. The kids (3)love it and it looks very cool in black. Bad... Flakey interior bits (mostly good) especially the further back you go, hit and miss dealers.

Overall a very good car, far superior to the sloppy, ugly and badly built renaults, and way in front of the citroen C4 which has the worst gearbox in the world, even worse than the R-tronic Audi R8 which is saying something. If you are a family person and enjoy driving this is the car to buy.

My car

I bought this car in September 2006. I have an airport transfer business and it appeared to be ideal for my business. However, I have had numerous problems with it. The staff at Ford in Wrexham have been unhelpful and now my engine has blown and I need a new engine at a cost of over £5,000. The car has done 130,000 miles but I have had it regularly serviced and really look after as it is my livelihood. The engine blew on my way to the airport and the smoke was so bad it stopped the traffic on the motorway and the police actually called the fire department to come out as I could not switch the engine off and there was a high risk of the car going on fire.