Great fun on alpine hairpins
This week I have been mostly bombing up and down Britain’s motorways. And this has given me plenty of miles thinking time about everything from: why do some drivers do 60 through average speed cameras, to wondering how many Tangfastics you can eat before your teeth fall out. The one thing I hadn’t thought about is the car I am driving.
This I find quite rare as I like to fiddle: be it with the controls; adjusting the seat constantly; revving the throttle to see how delayed the fly-by-wire is; or wondering which piece of dash has decided to act as a distractive reflection in the windscreen. All bits of playing that help me to B from A.
Now where's that kitchen sink?
Like a good football referee should be, the Ford S-Max is unnoticeable, just doing its job without any complaint. And what a job this car can do. In the last couple of months alone we have managed to place inside the vehicle: seven people, two skis, four mountain bikes, two fibre glass rear ends, one gazebo, one sofa, tools to run a small race team, eight race wheels and a 2.3m kayak.
Now I have to admit a small van would happily gobble up all that without fuss, but after each heavy load the van would fail to compete with its ability to turn back to family zoom wagon. Where the van would hold its own against the S-Max is on fuel economy.
Now the S-Max has not seemed to notice the rising fuel prices and its drinking habit is pondering me sending it to an AA meeting, so I set it a little challenge last month. Four of us were heading for a very last minute ski trip to the Alps and we thought that we could beat the cost of air fair by taking the car. Plus the S-Max didn’t charge extra for the skis and boots and would leave room for a bit of Calais shopping too.
Potential snow in the mountains meant that we needed to get some snow chains for the higher passes. To add a little bling to the PH Bus, 20” wheels have been fitted and so dub size chains would need to be found, a task we found slightly harder than we expected. So hard that we took off the 20s and returned the car to the Titanium supplied 18s.
In changing the tyres suddenly the ride and handling of the car were transformed. A wave goodbye to tramlining and a welcome hello to a better handling chassis that I know from my Ford’s of the past. The only problem was the car suddenly looked under wheeled for the concept body kit, but while driving around European Alpine roads this didn’t matter.
In the first 10,000 miles of using the car we hadn’t reset the average MPG and had managed 21.4mpg of spirited driving. It is 1280 miles to our base at Chambery and back to Blighty so that would be just short of 60 gallons, so time to reset and see how well the 2.5-litre turbo petrol engine does on European roads.
The whole trip including hairpins up cliffs left us with an average of 24.6mpg. Not exactly flying the green flag very well, nor helping my bank balance, but with a Eurotunnel crossing and plenty of French tolls the trip managed to come in £20 cheaper per person than flying, I certainly would recommend it for anyone skiing next ski season.
The other challenge the S-Max has been given is to tow around the PistonHeads race car. The engine hasn’t struggled with a lump of metal tied to the back even when darting around the Scottish hills getting to Knockhill, but I do feel that a diesel engine would be much better at this job than the high revving petrol version as you have to work it to keep momentum.
Back in the city the car has been ably ambling around the capital’s speed bump ridden roads. The vehicle is a little wider than most cars and rat-running through 2 metre width restrictions does lead to creeping though the metal bollards, especially as the wing mirrors are low enough to cause concern. The wing mirrors also took some of the London daily drivers by surprise with one being popped off by a turning bus, and a few whacks by the ever impatient couriers. They seem to pop back on without problems.
Though the S-Max makes you oblivious it is there when you are driving it, when you step out and close the door you feel that this car has hit the nail on the head for its market. It nearly fills the gap of needing two cars: one for convenience, the other for fun driving. I say nearly as I keep jumping out of it into a race car and hooning around circuits across Britain. You still can’t beat a car designed for one purpose, but this car would come mighty close if you just had to choose one.