The ford focus C-max has been our car for about 5 years now and has taken us all over the country and even a famous trip to Southern France. We have always until buying the recent Vauxhall Costa bought fords and particularly ford fiestas. However, when our then ford fiesta gave up the ghost it was time to buy a new car, now at the time we had a large red setter (we still do) and wanted a car in which we could convert the boot into a dog cage thing which people do. This never happened and there is a very good reason in that we started to have children, fortunately the C-max is the perfect people carrier.

The ford focus c-max we drive is a petrol powered car, it is a five door hatchback and ours is a silver one. We bought ours with 9000 miles on the clock and now we are approaching 80000 so far except for new tires and general servicing it's never had any serious problems.

The price

we bought ours when it was 9 months old and cost about £11000, new they cost about £17000. That's a reasonable price for a five door hatchback and has been a faithful servant for the last 5 years.

Handling

Any people carrier is of course built for the purpose of getting lots of people from one place to another in relative comfort, high performance handling, acceleration and driver enjoyment are not perhaps number one on the priority list. Saying that though for a big car, it is surprisingly responsive when being driven and cruises along very happily at 80 miles an hour. The 1.6 litre engine version we have has a decent range of speeds and responds well to being prompted for that quick getaway.

Comfort

Well its spacious I think you can say for certain, bucket seats for the driver and front passenger, ample leg room in the back and a spacious boot. The back seats easily take child seats, dogs sprawled on the back and the legs of my six foot four inch dad. He never complained so it must have loads of leg room.

Driving

This is a five speed gear box with a reverse as well of course, the gear box does take a little getting used to as its slightly higher than other car models. But this design is a plus after a while because it gives plenty of clearance for the hand brake. The steering wheel is large and responsive and on it are means to change the radio and CD but as this is a 2004 model then the application of mp3 players is a little difficult. The wheel also has the indicator and windscreen wipers behind it and the lights are on the right hand side of the driving position just above the right knee area.

Security

The car has central locking, and can be locked once in the car by pressing a little button behind the automatic window openers.

Any quibbles

We did have a problem with the driver's side window which in winter refused to come back up fully when pressing the automatic window button, as this model doesn't have any manual way of shutting the window it meant we had to leave the car open very slightly in out garage for a couple of nights. The garage fixed it very easily though.

The only other problem was that the water for the windows came out the wrong way around so when you squirted for the front windows, water would come out of the back and vice versa. This doesn't sound like a huge issue except when you consider that the wipers on cars is preset to come on when you put on the water squirter so it meant the wrong wiper was on with the wrong window. This was and is a slight annoyance and nothing more, just means we have to start the wipers manually when we use the water to clear the windows.

Entertainment

As I said our car is pre-mp3, there is a CD player, multi station radio player and nothing else. The reception for the radio is excellent and CD's play with decent clarity.

Fuel Economy

Probably not the car for fuel economy as it does about 320 miles to a full 50 litre tank so you get about 6/7 miles per litre and if you feel the need work it out in gallons but as this is 2010 I've no idea how many litres there are in a gallon. I'll guess it does about 40-45 mpg.

Buy again?

Yes, but see no reason to trade in this model for a newer version at the moment. Seriously touching wood after that comment.