2006 Ford Focus C-MAX Style review from UK and Ireland

Nothing so far.

I was a little worried about buying the car after reading poor comments here and elsewhere, but so far my concerns have not been justified.

I bought the car new via an on-line broker and saved 37% off the list price!!! The car was driven to my home (which accounts for the first 220 miles) and a very thorough and professional handover was completed, after which I paid the balance for the car and took it for a ride, dropping the driver off at the local railway station.

I have had the car for a little over a month and it now has 2,150 mile on the clock, most of which are motorway miles. I have been impressed with the motorway performance, where the engine feels perfectly at home. Indeed I have been quite surprised with the performance, as being the 90ps TDCi, I expected it to be weak in this area. It is, however, not a flying machine, and it lacks the punch of powerful diesel engines such as the 2.0 TDCi which I recently hired in Spain. I suspect that if you were to load the car up more than I do, the lack of power would become more evident.

So far the economy has fallen a little short of the manufacturer's claims, and I have been averaging around 52mpg. From previous experience this will improve as the engine settles in, though I do not envisage it achieving the claimed 58.9 on the combined cycle, especially when my motoring returns to the A roads, which I spend most of my time on.

I find the car reasonably comfortable, though my retired father has commented that the seats are too hard. The only other negative is that the housing around the gear lever extends into the space where my knee naturally falls when cruising on the motorway. The car is spacious enough for 4 plus luggage, but I would not like to use it for more than that.

So far I have not had any reliability problems, which is more than I can say for my Mini One Convertible, which is reported on elsewhere in these pages. I am aware that things can change, but my experience is that even the best manufacturers can make a lemon every now and again: it is just that some do it more frequently than others. I think that this time I have bought a good one.