During the late nineties, after the compact Ford Focus squeezed pretty much everything in terms of utility, dynamics and style from the potential of its class, a natural question emerged: is it possible to get even more from this size of vehicle? First, they tried to make it taller. The Focus C-Max, showing a typical compact multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) shape, was presented in 2003 and didn’t meet the expected success.
However, it is easy to understand why an MPV is not a very appealing scenario for most customers: obvious visual heaviness, relatively small fragile wheels, (intuitively) significant risk that the family will ask the captain to load/unload tons of stuff at any trip and, last but not least, dynamically uninspiring appearance (in fact, we buy automobiles to go from A to B faster, aren’t we?). Proof that they noticed this at Ford, the first generation of the Escape/Kuga was introduced in 2008 boasting a crossover-SUV design with a pronounced dynamic expression. A decade later, the Escape/Kuga was thriving, while the C-Max was discontinued – both were using similar technology and, besides, the practical virtues of the MPVs and crossovers are quite close. Everything clear now?Ambiance
Definitely, an attractive scenario! The project’s…
