Ford S-Max

Almost 10 years have passed since Ford first attempted to prove that a wee bit of style and dynamic rigour weren’t necessarily qualities lost on the seven-seater segment.

The Ford S-Max that resulted has proven popular – not just with buyers who found its mix of practicality and well-groomed design appealing, but also with those of us who prefer to labour under the illusion that we might be piloting a large and high-sided saloon rather than a minibus.

This, of course, was the point. Ford, apparently with its tongue nowhere near its cheek, still prefers to call the S-Max a ‘sports activity vehicle’, a marketing misnomer conjured up mostly to differentiate it from the slightly larger (and less shapely) Ford Galaxy it firmly considers an MPV.

The distinction, though, remains critical because once again the underpinnings – an evolution of the latest Ford Mondeo’s modular platform – are shared between the two.