Road Test: Ford C-MAX 2.0 TDCi Titanium 5dr

Planning permission is hard to come by if you want to extend your house. All to do with cocking up what's already there and ruining the view for your neighbours.

It's a pity there aren't similarly tricky regulations in the motoring industry, rejecting applications for extending, and ruining, cars. Think VW's pointless Golf Plus, or the mirth-magnet that was the Toyota Yaris Verso.

Occasionally, however, an extension comes along that doesn't blight the motoring landscape, and the Focus C-Max is one of those. Borrowing styling elements from the award-winning S-Max, this latest incarnation of the family man's Focus totally convinces as a stand-alone product. More so, I reckon, than the standard hatch.

There's nothing much new about the car's underpinnings, so it's no more sporty, despite the flashy redesign and far-reaching ad campaign that would have us all believe otherwise.

But the real meat and veg of the internally capacious and externally compact C-Max is still there. Nice-looking, practical, unpretentious and affordable.

The current 2.0-litre petrol is entirely sound, but the equivalent diesel better suits a vehicle as straight up as this. Either way, it's a car almost anyone should be able to imagine buying, running and living with. And all without buggering up the view.