Ford B-MAX Review 2024

If you want or need to carry a lot of stuff and/or people on a regular basis but want to do so in a small car, your choices are relatively limited. The B-MAX makes an excellent case for itself though. It is a practical car even before you take into consideration the sliding rear doors, and if you regularly have people getting in and out of the back seats - or even use the space as a makeshift van - you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

It also drives well enough that it won’t feel like a compromise, although if you can live with a conventional Fiesta you’ll save yourself some money and have a car that is easier to sell on afterwards.

Just like the old days, the main rival to Ford comes from Vauxhall, in the shape of the Meriva. The most recent version arrived a couple of years before the Ford B-MAX in 2010, and had its own take on better access to the rear seats with a pair of ‘suicide’ doors - hinged from the rear rather than the front.

Pigeonholed as a small hatchback rather than an MPV, Honda’s Jazz is almost somewhere between the two. It has a small footprint but a tall body and impressive space efficiency and is a sensible compromise if you don’t want the full MPV experience. If you want something more utilitarian, look at Ford's own Tourneo Connect.

Broadly speaking, the cabin of the Ford B-MAX is built to last rather than to wow. Again, much of the fitments are carried over from the Fiesta, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but is a reminder that this MPV is a grown-up small car rather than anything fancier.

Opt for the basic Studio trim level and you get plastic and cloth finishes, which are hard-wearing if not necessarily appealing to the eye, but on Zetec and Titanium you get part fake-leather on the seats and real leather on the steering wheel and gear lever, which at least means your main contact points are pleasing to the touch. The Ford B-MAX in Titanium X trim turns the fake leather into the real thing but it’s still only a part finish.

The basic infotainment on the entry-level Ford B-MAX Studio isn’t as bad as you might expect. You get a radio/CD including DAB and USB input, so you can at least listen to your choice of music. What is less impressive is the physical layout of the system, which dates back to the early days of the 2008 Fiesta. Designed to resemble mobile phones of the period, it packs dozens of buttons into a relatively small space, while the screen itself is a relatively small five inches.

Ford B-MAX Zetec models have the same basic layout but with the addition of Ford SYNC, which means a Bluetooth hook-up for streaming music and making phone calls, with the option to use voice control or the steering wheel controls. Ford B-MAX Titanium and Titanium X models offer a further upgrade with a Sony audio system bringing better sound quality and an extra pair of speakers (eight in total), although even this setup suffers from having too many small buttons.

Later B-MAX models came in Navigation-spec, available in Zetec, Titanium and Titanium X trim, which as the name suggests, added sat-nav as standard. With the B-MAX being too early for screen mirroring, it’s this system or relying entirely on your mobile phone if you want navigation.

Choosing the Ford B-MAX means space efficiency and practicality are a priority, and the little Ford delivers all you could reasonably expect from a car this size (the Ford B-MAX measures 4077mm long and 1857mm wide). Front seat occupants will have little to grumble about, with lots of headroom and plenty of fore and aft adjustment of the seat for good legroom. it’s much the same story in the rear too, with comfortable room for two adults, three if they don’t mind being friendly - the middle seat is thinner than the other two. 

The sliding doors of the Ford B-MAX are the big plus here, whether you have kids or adults climbing into the back regularly or getting cargo in and out. It’s worth mentioning that they are relatively heavy though, which may be an issue for some.

The Ford B-MAX's official boot capacity is 318 litres, while the rear seats of the Ford B-MAX split 60/40 so you can still carry passengers with longer loads, although the rear bench doesn’t slide to adjust the split between the boot and passenger area. This increases the boot space of the Ford B-MAX to 1386 litres. 

Folding the seats is easy, with the mechanism designed so you can do it single-handed, while the front passenger seat backrest can also fold forward, allowing you to fit a load up to 2.35 metres long. Ford B-MAX Zetec models and above also come with an adjustable boot floor, allowing you to raise or lower the height and divide the space. There’s no automatic operation for the boot but the tailgate itself is light enough that it is unlikely to trouble most people.

Storage space in the rest of the cabin is impressive too, with a big central storage cubby, well-sized door bins and four cup holders, plus a handy sunglasses holder mounted into the roof. Ford’s experience with MPVs shows here - Zetec models and above get a small rear-observation mirror mounted near the rear-view mirror so you can keep an eye on the kids (or adults) in the back without having to turn around. and there are 12v sockets in the front and back to keep everyone charged up.

All Ford B-MAX models come with a tyre repair kit as standard, although you could switch to a full-size spare for £95 when new. If you don’t like the idea of relying on a can of foam, it would be easy to find a used wheel and fit a new tyre for less than the cost of a new one from a dealer.

The Ford B-MAX has gone through a number of engine options in its lifetime, with the range slimming-down as it moved towards the end of production. The basic offering is the 1.4-litre 90PS petrol, available in Studio and Zetec trims, which moves the B-MAX along reasonably well but isn’t especially quick or particularly frugal either. The bigger 1.6-litre petrol has 105PS but comes with the PowerShift automatic gearbox only - it works well enough but saps power a little.

Two diesel engines are offered - a 1.5-litre in 75PS and 95PS forms. The 75PS is best avoided. It may have a useful 190Nm of torque but it is comfortably the slowest Ford B-MAX you can buy, whereas the 95PS version offers identical fuel consumption but is usefully quicker. Neither version is particularly refined, but if you must have a diesel then the 95PS is the one to have.

We’d recommend one of the two EcoBoost petrols however. Even though the design is getting on a little now, the basic brilliance hasn’t been diminished. The 100PS version is as quick as the higher-power diesel, and although it can’t match that car’s economy it still performs well - with 55.4mpg combined (NEDC) and 109g.km of CO2. Better still, the 125PS version adds the stop-start system as standard, is the quickest B-MAX you can buy and offers better fuel consumption than the 100PS version too.

A five-speed manual gearbox is standard on all engines (bar the 1.6-litre petrol) and offers a slick, effortless gear change. It’s good enough that you won’t think twice about changing gear, which is exactly as it should be.

If you plan to make full use of the Ford B-MAX’s ability to carry people then refinement will be an important consideration, and the compact Ford does a good job - although this is influenced by which engine you choose.

Whether you’re sat up front or in the back, refinement is good for a car of this size and cost. Wind noise is kept well in check, and there is a low level of road noise filtering through to the cabin, but nothing out of the ordinary for a car like this.

The diesel engine options inevitably come with more noise and vibration than the petrol offerings, although this is more likely to bother front seat passengers than those in the rear. The four-cylinder 1.4-litre and 1.6-litre petrols are a little quieter than the three-cylinder 1.0-litre EcoBoost offerings, but the noise that the EcoBoost makes is more engaging, and the performance sacrifice isn’t worth it, especially as you have to work the bigger engines more of the time to make any progress.

The Ford B-MAX was tested by EuroNCAP when it was first launched back in 2012 and achieve an impressive set of results, particularly in light of the fact that the rear door design meant it had to do away with a conventional B-pillar, a big contributor to a car’s crash performance.

Euro NCAP gave the Ford B-MAX a full five-star overall rating, with a very high 92% rating for adult protection and 84% for child protection. Pedestrian mitigation was given a score of 67%, while it scored another strong result in the safety assist category with 71%.

As standard, all Ford B-MAX versions are fitted with a comprehensive suite of safety equipment, including ESP and traction control, front, side and curtain airbags as well as a knee airbag for the driver and a tyre pressure monitoring system. Hill Start Assist is included on all models bar 1.4-litre petrols, and Active City Stop is a cost option, again not available on the 1.4-litre petrol. ISOFIX mounting points are fitted as standard to all models.

Safety is a consideration for everyone, but it is worth noting that the 1.4-litre models do without some useful features, which strengthens the case for choosing from higher up the range

The Ford B-MAX has built up a good reputation here, scoring 9 out of 10 overall in the recent HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, with buyers being impressed with its reliability. That said, there have been some issues with Ford's EcoBoost engines and older PowerShift gearboxes. 

Insurance for the Ford B-MAX should be impressively low and stands comparison with much cheaper and smaller cars. the 1.4-litre petrol and low-power diesel versions drop into group 8E, while the top-spec Titanium Navigator models with the 125PS EcoBoost engine are the highest rated at group 12E.

While the B-MAX is unlikely to be on the shopping list of anyone seeking a first car, the insurance group should make it possible, while those with decades of driving experience and years of no-claims bonus to back it up should find their insurance premiums are impressively small. You might be interested in our guide to the cheapest Ford models to insure if you're looking to buy a car from the Blue Oval.

Thanks to the ever-moving goalposts that are the VED rules in the UK, the level of road tax you pay for a Ford B-MAX depends not only on which engine you choose but more crucially when it was registered. For example, the 1.5-litre diesel can qualify for zero VED if it was registered on or before March 31st 2017 - buy the same car registered a day later and your VED bill suddenly becomes £150 a year. 

The same goes for the EcoBoost petrols, which can cost £30 or £150 a year depending on when it was registered. Regardless, lower-emission models will generally pay less as a rule of thumb.

Kicking off the range is the Ford B-MAX Studio model, which isn’t blessed with tons of equipment but does come with some key essentials - in particular, the audio system including DAB and Bluetooth. 

Moving up to the Ford B-MAX Zetec model as a bare minimum makes a lot of sense however - as well as opening up the engine choices to include the diesels, the EcoBoost petrols and the automatic, it adds some desirable extras like air conditioning, the SYNC system and the heated windscreen, which is a real boon in winter.

The Ford B-MAX Titanium and Titanium X models do ramp up the equipment levels still further - climate control and part-leather seat trim for example - but there’s little here to really justify the extra money. Also later models were available with Navigator specification, which adds sat-nav to Zetec, Titanium and Titanium X models.