How to ruin one of Ford's finest efforts

IMAGINE sitting down, glass of champers in hand, to watch the perfect theatrical performance.

It’s a hit new play which has received rave reviews in all the papers – including, naturally, The Champion. The venue offers a view of the stage unobscured by even the tallest of fellow showgoers, and acoustics Bang and Olufsen would be proud of. From the off, you’re gripped by a script blending all the best elements of Shakespeare, Noël Coward and Willy Russell, delivered by an ensemble cast comprising Dame Helen Mirren, Martin Freeman and Timothy Dalton.

You’re hooked, and as the first act draws to a climatic close Richard E.Grant launches into his finest soliloquy since he quoted Hamlet to a pack of wolves at the end of Withnail and I. Yet mid-sentence, amid this bout of theatrical perfection, a work experience student wanders onto clumsily onto the stage, knocks over one of the props, and looks at the leading man with an expression so exasperated it kills the whole performance stone dead.

“Am I on yet?” he asks pointlessly, but it’s too late. Consider your night ruined!

That’s how I felt after spending the best part of 500 miles with a Ford S-Max last weekend, gorging myself on everything from narrow country lanes to motorway outside lanes. 

While it’s starting to show its age it’s hard to deny that it looks great for a people carrier – a box on wheels with added seats, essentially. Its Mondeo-based underpinnings make it far more fun than any slab-sided diesel family wagon has any right to be, and the car’s star leading light, in the form of the 2.0 litre, TDCi turbodiesel engine, delivers a gutsy and reassuring performance.

It’s still my favourite people mover, but there’s a place in hell reserved for the automatic transmission.

The PowerShift system is like the work experience student ruining Richard E.Grant’s greatest moment – just when the turbodiesel comes on song, the gearbox wanders in, spending an eternity asking whether you’d like it to change up and then delivering a huge jerk of torque long after the overtaking opportunity’s gone. It’s particularly bad when pulling out of junctions, delivering a pause Jeremy Clarkson would be proud of at precisely the point.... ....when you don’t want it.

It’s not that I’m anti-auto, as I’m now on my second car equipped with a ‘slush box’, but this particular system was definitely the weakest link on a great package, hindering the whole of the car with its dim-witted demeanour. Happily, there is a manual mode on the PowerShift system which works very effectively, but that defeats the point of having an expensive, self-shifting transmission at your disposal. 

If you’re the sort of frustrated mum or dad who needs a family wagon capable of conveying seven but secretly wants a car that’s fun to drive, then by all means go out and look at an S-Max. Just make sure it’s a manual.

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In a weird sort of way, I miss the Renault Espace

A CAR you’d long forgotten existed is celebrating its 30^th year of production this week. Many happy returns, Renault Espace!

Admit it, you’d forgotten all about the Espace, hadn’t you? In fact, it’s so synonymous with big people carriers that I bet it’s just blended into the motoring background, quietly offering overproductive couples everywhere a spacious and well-equipped means of ferrying their children to school.Only – in this country at least – it hasn’t.

Even though the Espace is still very much in production, you haven’t been able to buy a brand new one in Britain for at least three years. It is proof positive that most Nineties of motoring institutions, the big people carrier, is on life support. 

Once upon a time everyone would offer you a roadgoing ocean liner with more seats than wheels, enough window glass to front a small office block and the ability to buckle up your youngest children in what might as well have been a different time zone. If you didn’t want a Renault Espace, you could have a Vauxhall Sintra, a Toyota Previa, a Fiat Ulysse, a Peugeot 806, or a seven-seater from just about any other manufacturer you can think of. 

The old ones are easy enough to find – just check your nearest minicab firm, and once you’ve overcome the distant whiff of stale vomit and kebabs you find examples with snooker ball smooth steering wheels with roughly three million miles on the clock. New ones, however, are all but extinct.With the notable exceptions of Ford’s Galaxy, Chrysler’s Grand Voyager and VW’s twin offerings of the Sharan and SEAT Alhambra, the truly gargantuan people mover is all but dead.

Renault, ironically, is partly to blame, because with the original Megane Scenic it sparked the idea that people carriers no longer had to be absolutely enormous to succeed. As soon as Vauxhall’s Zafira managed to offer up a normal sized car with seven seats – and this was 15 years ago, remember – the Espace and its ilk were finished. 

Which, in a small way, is a bit of a shame, because for every Espace that’s disappeared from our roads a BMW X3 or an Audi Q3 seems to have taken its place, with their aggressive – sorry, “sporty” – aesthetics and their tendency to sit three inches of your back bumper on the M62. Big people carriers might have been utterly unromantic, but at least you knew where you were with them. 

The Espace might be all but a distant memory on this side of the Channel, but in a weird sort of way I miss seeing it clogging up the nation’s school runs.  

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The Fiat 500 MPW is a stretch too far

By unveiling a seven-seater version of the 500, Fiat has finally solved one of the world’s great ongoing mysteries. Finally, the question of who ate all the pies has been answered!

The 500 MPW got my automotive gag reflex going when I first clocked eyes on it a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I’ve seen it through increasingly squinty, curious eyes, trying to make sense of where it’s coming from. I’m a huge fan of the 500 and understand it’s been the biggest Italian success story since that chap finished painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel. I also understand that BMW put the MINI through the Supersize Me treatment and the bloated result, the Countryman, was a sales hit.

Naturally, the bosses in Turin have put two and two together… and ended up with seven. While I was already struggling with the recently inflated version of Fiat’s city slicker, the 500L, the new MPW really is a stretch too far. To my mind at least, it’s the ugliest automotive offering since Ford put the Scorpio out of its misery.

Which is a shame, because I’ve always had a soft spot for the 500 (and pretty much every other tiny Fiat, for that matter). In fact, a glorious hour at the helm of an Abarth 500C Essesse, enjoying the sunshine through its open roof, reveling in its handling and listening to its little four-pots sing as you headed up through the gears, is among my most treasured motoring memories. The 500 is a car whose sole reason for existence is to make being small into something fun. A seven-seater family bus it is not.

Chances are the 500L MPW will be keenly priced, comfortable, spacious and reliable, but then so is a Skoda Yeti, or a Nissan Qashqai, neither of which look like a smaller car that’s spent a month eating nothing but Melton Mowbrays. I’m also fairly confident that people, even ones with a vague sense of aesthetics, will buy it, just as they did with the MINI Countryman.

All of that I understand, but what I don’t is that someone, at the same company which gave you the beautiful Barchetta, the challenging Coupe and the chic, original reinvention of the 500 clearly looked at it and thought “Mmmm, that’s nice.”

Slightly bloated beauty, in this case, is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

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Vauxhall hots up the Zafira Tourer to offer up space and pace

IF YOU'RE the sort of person who likes sports car pace but needs MPV pace then Vauxhall might have just the thing for you.

The company has offered us hotted-up versions of its Zafira people carrier before - notably the GSi Turbo of the early noughties, and the VXR models which followed it - and the latest version, the BiTurbo, follows very much in that vein.

Closely related to the Astra and Insignia BiTurbo models, the Zafira Tourer BiTurbo uses a twin-turbocharged diesel engine which offers up no less than 195bhp, meaning that it'll shoot to sixty in 8.5 seconds before going on to a top speed of 135mph.

Duncan Aldred, Vauxhall’s managing director, said: "Vauxhall is currently the only manufacturer to offer a sophisticated BiTurbo engine on a seven-seat MPV.

"It provides a perfect blend of high performance, impressive fuel economy and premium class quality in a seven-seat layout."

This is exactly the sort of modern day performance motor that presses all the right Life On Cars buttons. It offers not only a blend of practicality and turbocharged punch, but it's as pleasing to behold as a people mover can be and - because its a turbodiesel rather than a petrol - should be a little cheaper to run than its more extreme predecessors. Like the Skoda Octavia vRS and the sportier diesel Mondeos, it's quick in an unaffordable, unpretentious sort of way. I only hope it's as much fun to drive as the cracking Meriva Turbo I tried a couple of years ago.

If this sounds like the sort of go-faster people carrier you'd like on your driveway, go into a Vauxhall dealership with £27,685 and a big smile later this spring.

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Fire up the... Peugeot Partner

A DOUBLE duvet, a mountain bike, and a pile of bags and boxes filled with household clutter. No, not the prizes of some awful Generation Game spinoff but a list of things Peugeot's Partner could swallow with ease.

Trips to the tip are the sort of missions where you'd want the generously-named Peugeot Partner Teepee Outdoor HDi 115 on your side; it really is family man motoring on a truly utilitarian level. Keen students of all things automotive will have already deduced it's the familiar Partner van with an additional helping of windows and seats, but if you're prepared to drop any pretensions of being sporty and go along with its load-lugging groove than you've got the perfect, er, partner. If you strip your family car requirements back to hauling five people and as much luggage as possible, then I challenge you to find a motor more geared up to the task then this one.

Stylish it ain't and it's a big thing, but the tradeoff is the simply enormous amount of room you get inside, and when you aren't using the faintly ridiculous amounts of headroom and legroom in the rear the back seats fold away and the Partner turns back into a van, offering you more luggage space than just about any other people mover for the money. True, the 1.6 version I drove will set you back £17,000 but while I don't think that's too unreasonable, there are plenty of other Partners in the range offering you the same amount of space for even less.

But the best thing about the Partner is that despite its van origins it doesn't alienate drivers who like their vehicles smaller and lower (me, basically). No, it's not going to inspire you with its handling in a bleak corner of Britain's countryside but it disguises its considerable bulk with a welcome dose of handling aplomb, and on the motorway it's a comfortable cruiser which isn't left wanting for turbocharged diesel punch. The only thing I'd ask Peugeot to give the Partner for Christmas is a sixth gear, to help improve the already none-too-bad 44mpg I averaged with it.

The Partner isn't a thriller through the corners or a work of art, but it isn't pretending to be. See it for what it is - a tool which dedicates everything at its disposal to moving people and things as efficiently as possible - and it's a belter.

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It might be a van with windows, but I'm a convert

JUST call me Jean-Jaques and pass me a beret. This week, I've fallen for that most French of motoring institutions.

I know that the small-van-with-windows format is offered by all sorts of manufacturers these days - Ford with its Tourneo, Fiat with the Doblo and so on - but really it's the Gallic trio of Citroen, Renault and Peugeot who've made it a hit with motorists on this side of the Channel. Now, thanks to a week with a Partner as my partner, I can see why.

I've entrusted it with a several missions, including a trip to the tip to get rid of a few bits of household clutter simply too big for the Rover 214 to deal with, but the assignment on which it's impressed me most was conveying a carload of petrolheads to the NEC in Birmingham for last weekend's Footman James Classic Motor Show. Normally, this would be a job given to either my Rover or my mate's turbodiesel Saab 93, but it seemed almost rude not to use the big Pug instead.

Each and every one of us - a group of car enthusiasts who'd usually value the small, the sporty and the quick - left impressed by the Partner's almost ruthless approach to practical, family-friendly motoring. Up front, I loved the way it disguised its considerable bulk with its sweet handling, my turbo nutter, Saab-owning pal liked its mid range punch, and everyone else seemed slightly lost with the vast amounts of head and legroom.
In fact, the only real gripes were the popout windows in the sliding rear doors, which left them with a slightly stuffy feel on the long trip.

Admittedly, the boxy shape - especially in the delightfully Seventies shade of brown the car I've just tested came in - isn't going to keep you awake at night, and nor is it going to thrill you on the Buttertubs Pass, but I'm a small-vans-with-windows convert, because these things do the job they're designed to do brilliantly and unpretentiously.

Now, what's the going rate for a secondhand one?

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