MoneywebDRIVE: Review
Folding the front seat backrest liberates some of that theoretical B-pillarless ease of
access. Even with seats upright, boot space is surprisingly good.
That said, customers may also
ask about the overall structural
integrity of the body shell. Well,
Ford has integrated a B-Pillar
substitute by heavily reinforcing
the mating edges of the front
doors (which open conventionally) and the leading edge of
the rear sliding doors. Using sophisticated and very beefed up
locating-locking mechanisms
–which look expensive to produce - you end up with a very
solid structure, with plenty of resistance to side-impact in the
event of an accident.
Talking of occupant protection,the B-Max offers plenty of
passive safety equipment including seven airbags on all
models and child ISOfix mountings for child-seats. Active safety includes ABS, EBD and EBA –
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all braking systems to assist the
driver in stopping on a 10-centpiece and hill launch assist.
Other than that, in appearance
it is rather an odd-looking little car, with quite a long nose
overhang and a truncated tail.
The styling pics in design stage
looked much better with bigger wheels, as there is quite a
high body-metal-to-wheel ratio. Having said that, the boot
is surprisingly spacious and the
interior offers a variety of seatfold-down options that should
make it very useable.
The B-Max is offered in three
variants at present, all of them
equipped with a five-speed
manual transmission, which is
a bit odd, as this is the kind of
econo-wagon that lends itself to
Ford’s excellent PowerShift automatic transmission.
The award-winning one-litre
EcoBoost three-cylinder engine
is employed in all three models,
but In the base Ambiente version
(R221 900) its power rating is 74 kW,
whereas in the Trend (R246 900)
and the range-topping Titanium
(R271 900) the power output is
tweaked to 90 kW. Thanks to the
electronic possibility these days
of tweaking power and torque
levels easily via the amounts of
turbo-boost and fuel and ignition timing settings, torque on
both versions is 170 Nm. And having driven the B-Max on a short
launch drive around Jo’burg,
I can say that this vehicle is all
about torque, rather than power.
It has plenty of urge for a kid-mobile of this nature.
So, in summary, I remain a bit
nonplussed as to why the B-Pillar
wasn’t retained, as to get the full
benefit of that, you need to fold
down the front seat backrest, as
in upright position this remains a
loading obstacle that is just a little further into the cabin. But hey,
whatever blows your doors open
man (metaphorically speaking,
of course).
As for the rest, performance
is amazing for a one-litre, fuel
consumption should be well
in the seven-to-eight-litres-per
100 range, there is SYNC voice
command available, the finish and trim levels are of high
quality throughout and the
price, as they say in the classics, is right.
By Stuart Johnston