women's motoring & cars & car reviews for women
Ford
Ford S-Max Automatically Refreshed
May 28th
While I had for some time been secretly looking forward to getting inside a Ford S-Max, the day’s fun was rather overshadowed by a turn of events on the launch of the new-look, new-drive car.
We had a puncture – no that’s not right – a tyre that was beyond repair. In fact it was ripped to shreds on a narrow scenic lane with rather too many stones and sharp rocks for comfort – especially for the car.
We waited rather helplessly to be rescued in a very pretty village (having previously tried an amazing sealant kit which fills the tyre and gets the tyre pressure up to scratch, but which won’t work if the puncture is on the sidewall). We were bored and restless until a vision of loveliness in the form of a burly, hunky man came to our rescue. What is it about a man who knows what he’s doing, while doing what he knows so effortlessly? And what a huge jack it was as well! Even Paul was impressed with the proceedings.
Ford C-Max
Oct 28th
Ford have got a huge line-up of cars at these days and I’m still trying to get my head around the myriad models and trim levels, let alone who might want to drive and own them. Actually, wanting to drive them isn’t such a problem as are they by and large lovely to drive. But if you were in the market for a car and fancied a Ford which one would you go for? Sometimes too much choice just tips you over the edge and you can’t see the wood for the trees. Let’s restrict ourselves to Ford’s family cars for the moment…There’s the S-max. Quite large, quite sporty, rather plush and a seven seater, but not in the traditional full-blown seven seater MPV way – for that you want the Galaxy. Often seen as a luxury car, unless that is you have four kids and something this size just becomes essential. The S-Max has space a-plenty and the two extra seats are for those occasions when you need to cart around seven people, but don’t want to do so on a regular basis. Then you can hide them away and reclaim your huge boot.
The Mojo Honours List awards and the art of map reading
Jun 11th
When I get lost in a car I never get too concerned as I know eventually something will look familiar, or a road sign will materialise and point me in the right direction. Yet when I feel disorientated on foot, I panic, as normally it means I should be somewhere at a certain time, and I’m not!
That was the situation I found myself in last night where Ford had kindly invited me to join them at the Mojo Honours List awards in EC1. I arrived at Moorgate tube station with hand-drawn map only to find that none of the road names coincided with what I had confidently sketched earlier.
Help was at hand in the form of a street map and a guy minding his own business standing next to it, who, when asked, took out his phone and searched the address for me. Not only was I struck at how kind and helpful this guy was, but the fact that when the map appeared on his phone he did the girlie thing (or at least I’m told it’s girlie, whereas I just think it’s the obvious thing to do) and turned his phone around so the map was pointing in the right direction!
Two myths in one thrown out the window. People are amazingly kind and helpful (I’m a great believer that what goes around comes around), and reading maps up-side-down is for those people just trying to be clever.
I walked up the red carpet into the awards with a spring in my step and not a care that all the paparazzi never even glanced in my direction!
And as for the awards evening? All rather bemusing but great fun with lots of oldies up there getting their awards. Made me feel young again. And my kids started today off well with a gift from Ford in the form of one of their iconic transit vans – scaled down of course!
Ford Ranger
May 24th
Just an hour before clambering into Ford’s strongest vehicle, the Ranger, we had been pottering around the Cambridgeshire countryside in a Ford Anglia. Chalk and cheese, although both shared a noisy drive! I reminisced about my childhood (not that we ever had a Ford Anglia) with memories of tense holiday journeys, three kids squashed in the back and home made sandwiches and cakes in a carefully prepared picnic basket – again possibly imagined rather than real - but you get the general idea.
So back to clambering into a Ford Ranger and my first thoughts being, who would buy such a monster, and my finishing thoughts were…rather nice if you have the matching lifestyle – and off my mind went yet again into fairy tale world of living another life. Or maybe I’m just fickle. Show me a bit of nice paint work and a pleasant car to drive and I can convince myself it’s what my life is missing. Mind you, husband would love it, not for any adventurous activities that he takes part in (because he doesn’t), but for the maleness of it all.
Once you’ve banished thoughts of those dusty trucks so prevalent in the Mid-West, with supped up wheels and men in cow boy hats, and actually driven one, I can understand the need for such a vehicle for certain businesses and lifestyles. And what makes it all the more appealing, setting it worlds apart from other 4 x 4s, is the fact that you can’t label this car as having kerb appeal or as a status symbol.
This is a true work horse, a dressed up truck with no illusions of grandeur, yet with a fair amount of comfort and one that’s easy to drive and manoeuvre, to the point where I kept forgetting I was driving a truck apart from when glimpsed in the huge wing mirrors!
Ford Focus RS Factory Tour
Feb 6th
See also our Focus RS first drive feature here
Ford are very proud of the Focus RS as a stunningly effective driver’s car, with good reason if the reviews are anything to go by (see our First Drive story here). Anything that gets Steve Sutcliffe from Autocar so animated must be pretty special. But Ford are also proud of the fact that they’ve been able to bring this car to the market at all, let alone with a £25,000 price tag, which is where our factory tour came in.
As if we needed any more reasons to be weary of our old chum The Credit Crunch, producing cars that enhance a brand’s image but don’t actually make any money is something manufacturers can no longer indulge in. Ford had to make sure that this new RS could be produced on the same line, at the same time and in the same factory as every other Focus. They couldn’t take cars off the line for ~any reason, or slow the line down to add extra components. Previous incarnations of the RS had to be whisked off to specialist suppliers for the “fast bits” to be fitted, which made the car expensive and slow to make. ~It was also a process that allowed quality issues to creep in because the process couldn’t be as accurately managed.
I was lucky enough to be asked by Ford to fly to Saarlouis in Germany with Richard Bremner for an article published in Autocar magazine. While doing the stills photography I also made the short video you can see above with the hope of showing what goes on behind the scenes in an ultra-modern car factory. It’s an awe-inspiring experience because of the sheer scale of the operation, although I’m always impressed by how calm and measured everything seems, despite that fact that 1,600 cars a day come out of this building!
Of course we missed the last flight back from Luxemboug and had to hire a rental car to hurtle back to the UK in time for work the next day, but that’s a story for another time…