SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

My most recent drive is on the home page. Archived reviews and opinion pieces are in the active menu down the left side. Hover your cursor over a heading or manufacturer's name and follow the drop-down.


Taking it to the max: 2016 Ford B-Max 1.0 Ecoboost Titanium

Uninterrupted access

Posted: 21 February 2016

The cheat sheet
Price: R274 900
Engine: 998 cc, DOHC, 12-valve, inline three-cylinder, turbocharged
Power: 92 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 170 Nm between 1400 and 4500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 11.2 seconds
Max. speed: 189 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7.0 l/100 km
Tank: 48 litres
Luggage: 318 to 1386 litres
Warranty: 4 years / 120 000 km; with 3 years’ roadside assistance
Service plan: 4 years / 60 000 km; at 20 000 km intervals

More than one casual observer has asked: “Why introduce B-Max when Ford already has Tourneo Connect, which is essentially the same vehicle?”

The simple answer is that it isn’t; the only common feature is sliding doors. Tourneo Connect is built on a bigger platform, is 400- to 800 mm longer, stands 200 mm taller, has fewer airbags (four vs. seven), looks more “commercial” inside and offers bigger engines with the option of seven seats in its long wheelbase version.
 
And B-Max has an ace up its sleeve. Opening all its doors reveals that there are no “B” pillars – just 1.5 metres of uninterrupted access. That’s so people can load and unload big parcels or carrycots more easily and older humans may get in or out without bumping hips or shoulders. If there’s no pillar, how do the doors close and lock, you ask? Each one has big, solid latches in the top and bottom frame rails so no pillars are needed. Nothing new, actually; various manufacturers have offered pillarless cars since at least 1911.

There is one small drawback to the unpillared design. It means that front safety belts have to be built into the seat frames, so you can’t simply reach back over your shoulder to pull one closer; you need to touchy-feel back behind your hip to find it. The rear seats are the same, but an advantage is that when those chairs are laid flat, there aren’t any straps to get in the way of whatever is being loaded. While we’re about it, the front passenger’s chair-back lies down too – to accommodate longer loads.

Orientation: There are three B-Maxes – Ambiente, Trend and Titanium, all with five-speed manual gearboxes and the same one-litre, three-cylinder, turbopetrol engine. The only difference engine-wise is that Ambiente makes do with 74 kilowatts of power while the others develop 92 kW.

Kit common to all includes ABS brakes (disc/drum) with EBD, EBA, ESP and traction control. Then there’s hill launch assist, electrically assisted steering, ISOFix anchors, powered windows and mirrors, rear fog lamps, rear window defroster with washer and wiper, filtered air conditioning and SYNC® Gen-1 with Bluetooth, USB and auxiliary. And a multi-function display. If you want cruise control, buy Trend or Titanium.

Briefly, our Titanium test car featured all the stuff you really quite fancy but wouldn’t splurge your kids’ college money on. That includes front door handles with touch pads for locking and unlocking while the key stays in your pocket or bag, push-button starter, mirrors that fold inwards on lockdown so clumsy shoppers pushing supermarket trollies have a smaller target, warmed but fairly hard leather seats, automatic (but still single channel) air conditioning, a trip computer, a Sony music centre with eight speakers rather than six and a 4.2-inch TFT display. This is not a touch screen; you control everything with buttons below it.

Other neat things include a full-length sky roof with manual sun screens front and rear, auto-dipping interior mirror, a wide angle mirror for keeping an eye on the heirs, reversing camera with guides, parking alarms front and rear, heated front screen, front fog lamps, rain-sensing wipers, auto-on headlights and LED running lamps.

Like other small Fords using this engine it pulled willingly in almost any gear and was very tractable. The five-speed ‘box shifted easily and smoothly, pedals are nicely spaced and it’s easy to find the footrest. Less ergonomically enjoyable, however, is the position of the main light switch and the buttons for the fog lamps.

They’re hidden down on the right of the dash, behind the rim of the steering wheel, so be sure to familiarise yourself with them before driving. It’s no good scratching around for buttons when fog hits unexpectedly, is it?

Better ergonomics include a neatly rectangular loading platform only 61 centimetres above ground level; an extra load space, about 16 cm deep, below the main floor board; easily accessed buttons for the 60:40 split seatbacks that allow you to collapse them from behind; plenty of head-, knee- and foot space for tall rear seat passengers, lots of storage and additional cup holders at each end of the back seat. The emergency wheel is a steel spacesaver stored inside the boot.

The car is light - kerb mass of 1279 kg for top models; easy to steer and park – 10.45-metre turning circle and vision outward is mostly excellent – only the very wide rearmost pillars interrupt the view.

Who needs one? Families with elderly parents; mums with carry cots, prams and paraphernalia; weekend craft marketers with gazebo, tables and boxes of merchandise, or small businesses that occasionally need an informal panel van.

On the other hand, if it’s too small, you could instead buy a long-wheelbase Torneo Connect.

Test unit from FMCSA press fleet

Our review of the 2015 Ford Tourneo Connect 1.6 is here

Our launch report on the B-Max, with more technical detail, is here

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

Comments?
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