Twenty years on from its Geneva reveal, we explain why now is the time to invest in this practical MPV
Dredge your memory and it’s possible to come up with a handful of interesting MPVs.
The Renault Espace had sharply sleek lines, composite skin panels, cabin design worthy of an imaginative architectural practice and was so good that it would inspire a whole segment’s worth of imitators.
Like the sheep that they are, almost every car-maker scrambled to make MPVs, initially on the same big-car scale as the Espace but soon to the footprint of Renault’s smaller and almost as influential Scenic.
There was less imagination but more realism from these designs, unless you went shopping in a Fiat dealer, where you would be shocked by the profound ugliness of the bug-eyed and big-windowed Multipla.
The rarely bought Fiat was one of the cleverer designs out there, but perhaps the best executed, most complete and most satisfying MPV, and one much the same size as the Espace, came – a little unexpectedly – from Ford. Unexpectedly because Ford was not a brand known for making exceptionally practical cars, nor cars that strayed somewhat from the market segment at which they were aimed.
The 2006 S-Max was a derivative of the big Galaxy, a people carrier entirely conventional in its conception and none the worse for that, although the word derivative massively undersells the cleverness of the S-Max.
Which was a more rakish and somewhat sportier version of its boxier big brother, despite which it still packed seating for seven and a phenomenally generous loadspace.
This was a car that could swallow six by four-foot slices of mdf and allow you to shut the tailgate on your load. It could heft sizeable items of furniture and a mighty heap of smaller things besides.
And because each of the two rear rows of seats folded individually, you could carry plenty of stuff and more than two people. Even with seven aboard the S-Max had a pretty decent boot.
At least as impressive was the fact that all these seats folded absolutely flat, any gaps between them covered by folding carpeted panels. It was a marvel of spatial engineering, and as an additional flourish – two, actually – Ford allowed each of the trio of middle row seats to slide, and provided a pair of covered cubbies beneath the feet of their occupants.
Its sleek lines, neat detailing and the high quality of the interior indicated another tour de force from Ford, which by the early 2000s had earned a fine reputation for making real driver’s cars of its mainstream models.
Indeed, Ford reckoned that the S-Max was enough of a dynamic performer to award it a different acronym, SAV an abbreviation of Sports Activity Vehicle. It was a term coined by BMW for models not quite as sporty as a two-door 3 Series, and not inaccurate for the S-Max if driving was one of your favoured sports. Because this big van did bends in the manner of machines far slinkier.
As it happens your reporter owns a S-Max 2.0 TDCi, a 2007 specimen of 122,000 miles and many battle scars from a previous life.
It was bought cheap as a non-runner – that’s another story – and having been resurrected it never fails to impress with its civility, comfort, deft handling and superb steering feel. It’s quick, too, the diesel’s torque delivering plenty of thrust. No less amazing is the aforementioned ability to carry stuff – with no kids, we use it as a very well upholstered van – and the ease with which it will pull a classic car-laden trailer.
Loads of buyers discovered the same mix of usefulness, refinement, performance and driving enjoyment, making the S-Max a big hit for several years.
