I Think About The Ford C-Max More Than You Probably Think About Actually Good Cars

The old, good version of Deadspin used to do this great series called “Let’s Remember Some Guys” where they’d just sit around, often on Facebook Live, and invite people to remember some guys. The point never seemed to be to recall Micheal Jordan or Wade Boggs, but rather players like Toni Kukoč or Javy López. Not Hall-of-Famers, just dudes who managed to put together enough seasons in a major league sport to squeeze out a few Topps cards and stick somewhere deep in your memory.

For me, those players are probably Glenn Davis/Kevin Bass of the Astros and Mario Elie/Matt Bullard from the Rockets during their back-to-back Championship seasons. All greats, in a way, but none of them are likely to get an ESPN docuseries made about their lives.

You can play this game with cars all day. For every Pontiac Bonneville SSEi there are a dozen mid-tier, replacement-level Pontiacs you can remember (Le Mans, Torrent, Wave, Sunbird, et cetera). The one that always gets me, though, is the Ford C-Max. I keep thinking about the Ford C-Max.

Why The C-Max Exists

European cars, unlike American ones, tend to grow slowly when it comes to wheelbase and width. The streets of Paris ain’t getting any bigger anytime soon. Older cars, with their lack of modern safety features and thin doors, managed to fill up parking spaces and still offer a decent amount of roominess.

All this began to change in the late ’90s and early ’00s when the compact multipurpose vehicle, or compact MPV, started to become popular in Europe. These were vehicles typically based on an existing compact car platform stretched out as much as automakers could get away with.

Who started the segment is up for debate, though people tend to think it’s either the Renault Scenic or the original Mitsubishi RVR/Dodge Colt Wagon thing. The reality is, automakers had attempted something like this going back to the early ’80s Honda Civic Wagon and Toyota Tercel Wagon, which were taller and more squat than your average estate.

By the early aughts these became the it thing in Europe as the continent wasn’t quite ready for big SUVs yet. Citroen had the Xsara, Renault had the Scenic, and Volkswagen was busy planning a bunch of variations of the MQB platform.

Ford, though, had nothing, and according to a press release from Ford about the Ford C-Max concept, it’s because none of their ideas were good enough yet:

“The compact Multi-Activity Vehicle segment is one of the fastest growing in Europe, and people have been waiting impatiently for Ford’s entry. The truth is, we could have been there sooner. We had plans on the drawing board, but at an intense and soul-searching meeting in Cologne early in 2000, we looked at what we were creating and decided it wasn ’t good enough.

“It wasn’t good enough as a meaningful alternative for our customers to competitors already on the market. It wasn’t good enough to warrant the investment in money and talent we subsequently used more wisely elsewhere. Most importantly, it wasn’t good enough to carry the Ford brand where we wanted it to go, because it was during that summer of 2000 that we fundamentally reshaped the future of Ford of Europe.

That is some intense prose about a compact MPV concept. It’s not wrong, though. Ford of Europe went through a long funk and the early 2000s, which brought us cars like the Focus RS and revised Mondeo, was a legit turning point for the company.

The concept is clearly a version of the Ford Focus of the era stretched in every direction. I think it looks clean and I especially like the sleek greenhouse created by the high beltline. By the time it came into production the the C-Max gained some more production-focused details and the DLO was enlarged to make visibility better.

This isn’t the car we got and, unless I’m in Europe, I don’t think about it that often.

The One I Think About

With the second generation of the Ford Focus moving from the C1 Platform to the Global C Platform it was time for America to get some MPV-y goodness. There was a twist, however, as the only C-Max we’d get would either be a hybrid or a PHEV.

People tend to forget that back in the early 2000s Ford licensed a bunch of hybrid technology from Toyota that eventually found its way into the Ford Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid. Because of this, Ford and Toyota have long shared a similar architecture for hybrid vehicles (Atkinson cycle engines/planetary gearsets).

With the Escape Hybrid temporarily out and Mercury killed Ford needed something to compete with the Prius and Prius V in the United States. Plus, to sell cars in California it was quite helpful to Ford to have a vehicle that could earn itself some emissions credits (as the C-Max did in Energi/PHEV trim).

These were attractive, affordable, and efficient five-passenger vehicles. When the original C-Max Hybrid went on sale in 2013 it could be had for $24,995 and it promised 47 MPG City/Highway/Combined, better than the Prius V. The Energi was more expensive, but offered 20 miles of pure-EV range.

Unfortunately, Ford perhaps overpromised on the mileage and most reviewers and Consumer Reports found that this wasn’t the case and Ford eventually revised down those figures and paid out money to owners who felt they’d been duped. The issue was that Ford was able to use testing for vehicles with similar powertrains and assume similar mileage, which was a “loophole large enough to drive a hybrid through” as CR concluded. The cars were then switched to 40 or 39 mpg combined, depending on the year.

Did that doom the car? I’m not sure. The C-Max sold 35,210 models in its full first year (2013) and slid every year after that. By 2018, when the car was discontinued, Ford was already eyeing new technology to reach buyers focused on efficiency and had the Mustang Mach-E waiting in the wings to debut the next year.

I Still Kind Of Wished I’d Bought One

When I was in the market for a car back in 2016 the C-Max wasn’t particularly popular and I’d been seeing them going for reasonable prices. I thought I could snag one for as cheap as $24,000.

I asked our friend Tom McParland what he thought and he suggested politely that, since he knew I cared a lot about reliability, “the C-Max and Golf will probably be fine in this regard, but their longevity is a bit of an unknown variable at this time.”

Obviously, the Subaru Forester that Tom very nicely helped me buy at a great discount was likely a better car, though the reliability wasn’t great. Comparing the resale value of the C-Max and the Forester I probably made twice as much on the Subaru as I’d have made on the Ford, so perhaps Tom’s advice was the right advice.

Regrets, I have a few. The Forester was nice in a few ways, but I could have had a hybrid way back in 2016. Think of all the stories I’d have had! Think of all the fuel I’d have saved!

At the Galpin Car Show, we even had a reader, Rex, who brought out his C-Max Energi. I was so excited to see a C-Max. I knew it had to be in the car show and I’m bummed that I got distracted and didn’t get to spend more time checking it out.

Being a car geek means loving cars that are strange to other people. The C-Max is just so European and weird that I wouldn’t have run into many other people who owned one. I can so vividly see the life I’d have led with a Ford C-Max Hybrid. Maybe the Astros would have beaten the Nationals at home! Maybe we’d have gotten more seasons of Jessica Jones!

I think about this all the time. Every time I see one. Every time I see a similar generation Focus. This is insane, obviously. Sometimes when I have a strange thought I’m sure someone else has also had the same thought. But this? This one might just be me.

Also, I’ve never driven one, so perhaps that’s helping keep the allure alive.