THE all-new five-seat Ford C-MAX and seven-seat Grand C-MAX will be sold in just Zetec or Titanium trim levels, with prices starting at a competitive £16,745.

Ford learned from the launch of the original model seven years ago that some buyers wanted more than the five seats available.

Oddly, the seven seater comes with sliding rear doors, while the five seater has conventional ones. That's a lot of costly extra engineering to no good purpose isn't it?

Despite very wet roads covered in fallen leaves, the new MPV behaved impeccably, with safe and surefooted handling, easy and accurate steering and excellent brakes.

The commanding driving position, rather like a 4x4, is excellent and the view all round is very good.

I drove the 115bhp diesel with a six speed gearbox and found it a great all round performer. It is very flexible, pulling from low revs in all the gears, and the noise level is very low.

Zetec spec brings alloys, air, alarm, bluetooth and voice recognition on top of the more usual items that come with almost every car these days.

Titanium models add auto wipers and lights, auto dipping mirror, climate, hill launch assist, cruise and a tyre deflation warning.

: Citroen C4 Picasso