My grandfather disappeared for a week one day in June. At least he said it felt like a week. He was driving his car in the West Country when it skidded and plunged into the undergrowth, where, 24 hours later, a farmer found him trapped behind the wheel. Grandpa always maintained that his ordeal was the result of his car being green, and therefore camouflaged from passing traffic.
The June in question was some eighty years ago, but Grandpa's off, and others like it, gave rise to a widely held belief that green cars were unlucky, simply because they were less likely to be spotted in such circumstances. This apocryphal dogma haunts the motor trade even to this day, and green cars are still shunned by many on the grounds of their being 'unlucky', without anybody knowing quite why. Well now you do.
Ford is very adept at gauging public opinion, and therefore I was quite surprised to find that the C-MAX test car was sprayed all over in something called 'Honour Green'. Also surprising was the fact that it came bundled with CVT transmission, hitherto not one of the motor industry's most endearing inventions.
Since DAF first introduced Constant Velocity Transmission on its Daffodil back in the 1950s, a number of attempts have been made by various manufacturers to revive CVT transmission, generally with little success. So when Ford announced the introduction of Durashift CVT (now meaning Continuously Variable Transmission) to its C-MAX range, I had expected the usual irritating mix of a high-revving engine and what sounds like a badly slipping clutch.
Wrong. To say that Ford's CVT is a delight to use would be an understatement. Mated to the 1.6-litre TDCi engine powering the C-MAX test car, it proved to be just about the most effective coupling of engine to wheels I think I have ever encountered - better even than Audi's impressive DSG pre-select 'box.
The seven-speed CVT transmission can be used in one of two ways: either as a fully automatic gearbox or as a sequential, semi-manual box, both with quite different but notable virtues.
Taking full advantage of the Stage lll Duratorq's impressive torque output of 240 Nm at just 1750 rpm, the automatic side of the CVT transmission reaches for the highest possible gears on all occasions. Flicking from 'D' to sequential at 30 mph, I noticed in the LCD display that the car was already in sixth gear, and despite the fact that the engine was turning over at less that 1500 rpm, as soon as I squeezed the throttle the take-up was immediate. Under heavy acceleration the 'box naturally dropped a cog or two but the transition between ratios was so smooth that I found myself using the tacho to detect the changes.
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