Fleet News’s three months with the Grand C-Max are now up but they coincided perfectly with the summer period. Cue frequently day trips with extended family making use of all seven seats and every square inch of luggage space.

Admittedly, once seven seats are in use, there is very little luggage space left, but as a family orientated fleet car for employees who have the occasional need for more than five seats, but don’t require the surplus capacity offered by the larger S-Max or Galaxy, the Grand C-Max offers a good compromise.

The impact on fuel efficiency of a fully laden car is surprisingly low; the 42mpg we averaged during the testing period dropped only slightly to 41mpg. That said, we never got close to achieving the official combined figure of 48.7mpg, falling short by around 14%.

Driving experiences have been good. The Grand C-Max effortlessly covers long distances but is rigid enough to reward more enthusiastic driving on winding rounds. For a large car, anyway.
Of our original quibbles, most have been resolved. Switching the key fobs solved the problem of an intermittent refusal to unlock the doors.

Likes include the Easy Fuel system which prevents miss-fuelling, although the 10-second delay before removing the pump nozzle can be a little tedious.

Hill launch assist works well, preventing any roll back, while keyless starts means keys can be thrown into the centre cup holder; although if the car also had keyless entry they could remain in pocket.

One piece of kit that remained untested – by me at least – was the Active Park Assist, a £475 option which automatically reverses the car into a parking space. A colleague tried it and reported a successful parallel parking manoeuvre; I’m less willing to relinquish control of the car on public roads.
 

The Grand C-Max now joins our sister magazine AM for three months but perhaps I need to set up some cones in the staff car park to try the Active Park Assist for myself!