The Grand C-Max provides seven passenger seating in a relatively small compact package. There are sliding rear doors on both sides.

Ford’s next-generation of small, multi-activity vehicles, C-Max and Grand C-Max, will appear in their final production versions at the Geneva Motors Show.

Teasers versions of the vans appeared at the Frankfurt Motor Show last September. (Click here.)

Ford is also announcing technology “enhancements” for the Ford Kuga and Mondeo, plus revealing additional options for the new S-Max and Galaxy at Geneva.

The C-Max range, which goes on sale later this year in Europe, are by U.S. standards mini-minivans, but a stretched version of the five-passenger C-Max, dubbed “Grand,” will eventually find its way to North American shores, along with a revised Focus somewhere around 2012.

One Ford, at least in the Focus line, at last.

This will end one of Ford managements’ truly bonehead decisions – keeping the old generation Focus on sale while it was long past its prime by refusing to collaborate with Ford Europe and Ford Asia-Pacific on the second generation Focus, which has been on sale – successfully – elsewhere for six years now.  

The new Grand C-Max provides seven passenger seating in a relatively small compact package. There are sliding rear doors on both sides of the van. And anyone who has ever wrestled with getting a child into a child seat will love this; and even if you do not have younger children – this Chrysler minivan inspired touch – makes loading so much easier.

Better still, to maximize the versatility of the 7-seat layout, engineers have developed a new seat folding mechanism for the three second-row seats. It allows the center seat to fold under one of the two outboard seats, creating an aisle between them – especially nice when the outer seats are occupied by child seats or booster cushions. Owners, therefore, have the option of using the convenient 2+2+2 seating layout, or switching to seven-seats if need be.

This long overdue globalization – going all the way back to the failed Ford 2000 reorganization in the 1990s that didn’t deliver the promised common architectures and powertrains – is the recognition by American executives that their strategy, doggedly pursued under various Revitalization Plans of the past decade, actually resulted in record losses in 2008, as customers defected from the large trucks and SUVs that were at its core.

The revised C-Max interiors have two, five-way toggle switches on the steering wheel, which control the two main vehicle displays: one in the instrument cluster and the second display mounted in a high position in the center console. Ford claims that this “intuitive” control system enables the driver to operate the key vehicle features while keeping both hands on the wheel, and with a minimum of distraction.

In the U.S., The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates the 6,000 people were killed in distracted driving accidents last year and hundreds of thousands more critically injured, but so far, NHTSA has down nothing to stop the increasing amount of electronic content into new models.