Taken as a whole, I'd have to give the Ford S-MAX 2.0-litre a solid eight out of ten. It does what it sets out to really very well. There are, however, some times when I can't recommend a car with hand on heart and this is one of them. Intrigued? Read on.

Every now and then you drive a car that's a mismatch. The saddest thing is when you have a fantastic engine that's crying out for a decent car to wrap it up in. I was always left with this gnawing frustration after driving an Alfa Romeo GTV or an AMG Mercedes SLK. The Ford S-MAX 2.0-litre reverses that problem. Here is a fantastic car saddled with a distinctly underwhelming powerplant. Ford dealers the length and breadth of the country are probably spitting feathers as they read this but there is a silver lining for your shiny suited salesman. If you want the full-on S-MAX experience, you'll just need to grease his palm with another £800 and he'll put you in the infinitely preferable 1.8-litre TDCi diesel.

So why has this engine left me so unenthused? The figures it makes seem to stack up. It'll sprint to 60mph in 11.4 seconds and hit a top speed of 122mph making it no slouch. It'll even manage to average 35mpg - quite some achievement for what is a proper seven-seater sized MPV. Reasonable group 11 insurance and a 194g/km carbon dioxide emissions figure also make it look relatively affordable to run and 145bhp seems a respectable output from that 2.0-litre engine. There's also an identically priced flexifuel version of the car with this engine capable of running on any mix of bioethanol and petrol in the same fuel tank.

Then you drive it. Like any S-MAX, the handling is peachy, the gearshift is crisp and the steering feelsome, but the engine is the weakest link. If you're accustomed to driving diesels it'll feel as if someone has slipped a 1.3-litre up front. Just where you expect a meaty surge of acceleration there's nothing. You'll need to really give this engine a sound kicking to make respectable progress, crippling fuel economy in the process. Crisp pull aways from a standstill seem to rely on cremating the clutch. It just doesn't make for a relaxing drive if stop/start stuff is involved. On a run it feels a lot better, the car settling into a refined cruise with the six-speed manual box dropping the revs to an acceptable level. Let's not kid ourselves though. This is the easy stuff and most engines will shine when asked to sit at an undemanding 70mph.

If this were the only S-MAX offered, the big Ford would win my award for the most frustrating vehicle on sale today, but the 2.0-litre's biggest problem is that every other engine in the S-MAX line up is a cracker. The 2.5-litre five-cylinder petrol powerhouse really brings the chassis alive and all three diesels are well worth having, even the base 100bhp 1.8-litre unit. This fronts up with a torque figure of 236lb/ft compared to the 2.0-litre petrol's paltry 140lb/ft showing. This is the crux of the problem. The lack of torque of this engine makes it fundamentally unsuited to this sort of vehicle. I didn't even get to drive the car fully laden either, something which would have only exacerbated the torque shortfall.

"The moral of this story? If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly"

So, given that you're not going to cut corners and buy this lamentable version, let's continue with the rest of the S-MAX, because the rest of the news is very good indeed. For a start it's got the right sort of shape. There's room inside for seven people but it's a radically sportier vehicle than the latest Galaxy model with which it shares the same underpinnings. Ford point to the fact that the S-MAX in fact shares just a handful of exterior parts with the more conventional Galaxy, the headlamps and bonnet having the same part numbers. The comparative height of the vehicles (1,676mm for the Galaxy and 1,607mm for the S-MAX) shows that the sleek, hunkered down appearance of the sportier S-MAX is not merely down to clever penmanship. This is a vehicle that is the sleekest people mover this side of a Mercedes R-Class.

This is a crucial time for Ford's big MPV portfolio. It has taken command of development and production of the Galaxy - previously a job shared with Volkswagen and SEAT - and hopes to eradicate once and for all the nagging quality problems that plagued this family of cars. Then there is this S-MAX, a model that takes the company into uncharted waters. Just when we thought there were precious few niches left to plunder, Ford has come up with another. Think of it as a full-sized, sporty MPV that's at the affordable end of the market and you'll see why, at this level of specialisation, the market has so far gone untapped.

Let's get to the heart of any MPV style vehicle - the seats. Ford's designers appear to have become fed up with Vauxhall taking all the plaudits for clever seating solutions and have come up with a system of their own. FFS (Ford FoldFlatSystem before you attribute a baser meaning to that acronym) allows 32 different seating permutations. The second and third rows of seats all fold flat to form a genuinely huge load floor that measures 2.0 by 1.15 metres which is about as big as a double bed.

In addition to the Ford FoldFlatSystem, a number of lashing points are located across the floor and on the cabin sides, helping to prevent your belongings from destroying themselves if you do fail to resist the Ford's sporty character. The perennial complaint of seven-seat vehicles, namely that there's no room for luggage when all seven seats are occupied, is partly addressed by the S-MAX which offers 285 litres of space with all seats in place. This is up 18 per cent over the old Galaxy. The answer to this question is staring buyers right in the face. Buy a decently sized roofbox for those rare occasions that you are going to be loaded to the gunwales by seven people and their tat. If you do wish to run the S-MAX in removal van mode, it'll heave around up to 2,000 litres of goods with all the rear seats folded flat. There are also no fewer than 26 different cubbies located around the cabin so you'll need to know where you left that key/credit card/wedding ring or it could be a lengthy search. In total, there's a full 90 litres of oddment stowage in total.

Great car, rotten engine. Choose any S-MAX as long as it's not powered by a 2.0-litre petrol engine and you're golden.

TOP 3 S-MAX DEALS

The results below show the top S-MAX deals on buyacar

	Ford S-Max 2.0 Titanium 5dr People Carrier
	ETR	Mthly £320	Saving £2,544	Price £18,646
	Ford S-Max 2.0 Zetec 5dr People Carrier
	ETR	Mthly £293	Saving £2,347	Price £17,343
	Ford S-Max 2.0 Edge 5dr People Carrier
	ETR	Mthly £268	Saving £2,175	Price £16,015

typical 10.35% APR

PCP finance quote over 48 months,  10,000 miles pa,  deposit of £1000