Ford S-MAX Titanium review
by David Finlay (22 May 2008)
The arrival of our third long-term test car (after the Toyota Auris and Kia Rio) hasn't gone quite the way I thought it would. My fault entirely. The preliminary conversation went something like this: "Hi, Ford - any chance of a long-term test in one of your products?" "Sure. How about an S-MAX?" "Great!" No stated preference on my part about which particular model.
So I had nobody but myself to blame when the car arrived a couple of days ago and I realised what Ford had chosen for me. No economical low-powered diesel this. Oh no. What I've got is the top-spec Titanium with the Volvo-designed 2.5-litre turbo petrol engine, also used in slightly modified form in the Focus ST. It's the fastest S-MAX you can buy, it's the second most expensive (after the 2.2 turbo diesel in the same trim level) at £22,800, and with the exception of the 2.3-litre petrol automatic it's the least economical, with a combined figure of 30.1mpg.
Uh-huh. You know something? I think I'm going to be aiming to beat that last figure over the next few months, unless something really spectacular happens to fuel prices in the very near future. So far I've done 85 miles, and it's sobering to realise that I've burned about £15 worth of petrol in the process. The fuel readout on the trip computer hasn't reached as high as 30mpg yet, but that's probably because of the roads I've been driving on; there's a long motorway trip coming up shortly, so we'll see if things improve then.
First impressions are of a very roomy car (as it should be, being effectively a sleeker version of the Galaxy) with low noise levels and a tendency for the front end to wallow over bumps. It will be interesting to see if this last aspect becomes more or less annoying as time goes on.
Since this is a Titanium car it's full of all sorts of fancy bits such as voice control which I hereby commit myself to trying out. I've always imagined that I would find talking to a machine rather silly, and have avoided doing so in the past, but now that it's going to be available for an extended period I'll give it a go.
But the priority is to see if I can make this thing exceed 30mpg, preferably by a healthy margin. If I can't, this is going to be an expensive summer.
June 2008 Report
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