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On the face of it, the S-Max is an easy car to mock. A sporty family car. It's a pram with fender flares, a comb-over for a bald spot, a sticking plaster over a gaping mid-life crisis.

But the S-Max isn't any of those things. It's bloody great. Ford's sport-flavoured MPV is proof that you can indeed have your cake and eat it.

Two numbers tell you everything you need to know about the S-Max.

The first number is seven. That's how many seats you get. Not flimsy excuses-for-chairs that even seven-year-olds will struggle to get into without first unscrewing their feet and leaving them in the boot, either. Proper, comfortable, fold-flat seats.

The second number is 217. That's the horsepower on tap. Admittedly that's with the top-of-the-range engine - the snarling 2.5-litre five-cylinder block stolen from the Focus ST - but the very fact that Ford even gives you the option of that lairy lump tells you exactly what it had in mind when it dreamed up the S-Max.

And it feels like a sports car. Drop the family off at the supermarket, hunt down your favourite B-road and set the S-Max loose. It shrinks around you, almost visibly. The brakes tighten, the suspension hunkers down, and it devours corners with frightening voracity.

In the wrong hands, the S-Max could have been a nightmare. Unloading a baby buggy from the back of a vehicle with such brazenly pumped-up sills and aggressively slashed vents should have be a cue for a barrage of Viagra jokes.

But the S-Max has got the walk to back up the talk. It's got the performance and the practicality. The S-Max is a functional family car, but it's also far more fun than it has any right to be. And you can't mock that.

Don't forget: the only place to get full details of all the winners is in the Awards issue of Top Gear magazine, on sale December 13.

Read Ford S-Max Car Review

Ford S-Max road tests
Ford S-Max 2.0 TDCi Titanium - October 24, 2006