Ford B-Max Review and Prices

You can get the B-Max with a range of petrol and diesel engines and with either a manual or an automatic gearbox.

Pick the 1.0-litre turbocharged petrol model if you spend most time around town. You can get it with 100hp but the perkier 125hp version is both faster and a touch more efficient. Ford claims it’ll return 57.6mpg but in normal driving you can expect to see a figure in the high forties.

You’ll want to consider a 1.5-litre diesel model if you do lots of miles each year. The 75hp version is a little weedy and sounds pretty gruff when you accelerate hard but the 95hp model will happily cruise along at motorway speeds without feeling overworked. Go easy on the accelerator and it’ll return around 60mpg compared to Ford’s claimed 74.3mpg.

The standard five-speed manual gearbox feels precise and is easy to use, but if you want an automatic you’ll have to pick a 105hp 1.6-litre petrol model. Unfortunately, it isn’t as fast as the high-tech 1.0-litre petrol and struggles to return more than 35mpg in normal driving conditions. Its six-speed automatic gearbox does help take some of the stress out of long journeys, however.

The B-Max’s tall body and large windows give you an excellent view out over the road ahead. The thin pillars between the front doors and the windscreen don’t obscure your view at junctions and its large rear windscreen gives you a good view out the back. Unfortunately, the thick frames around the side windows can make checking over your shoulder for motorway traffic slightly tricky.

Thankfully, light steering makes it dead easy to manoeuvre the B-Max around town and the large rear windscreen helps make parking a doddle. To make squeezing into the tightest of spaces even easier, you’ll want to pick the optional £200 City Pack or £600 Rear View Camera Pack. The former comes with rear parking sensors while the latter adds front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera.

The B-Max feels a little firmer over large bumps than either the Venga or ix20 but it still softens the blow of large potholes impressively well without sending unpleasant thuds through the cabin. It takes rutted country lanes in its stride too, and feels far more eager on a twisty backroad than the rather sedate Kia and Hyundai.

Tyre noise is mostly muted and the B-Max does a good job of suppressing the annoying wind whistle you’ll hear in most small MPVs. It’s impressively stable and smooth at motorway speeds too – so long as you avoid the rather noisy 75hp diesel – and both Titanium and Titanium X models come with cruise control to give your right leg a rest on long journeys.

The B-Max earned an impressive five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP back in 2012. The testing procedures have moved on quite a bit since then, however, so newer five-star-rated cars will provide a extra protection in a crash.

For a little extra peace of mind you’ll want to pay £200 for the automatic emergency braking feature. It scans the road ahead for obstacles and can automatically apply the brakes to help prevent a collision.