Ford Iosis Max unveiled at Geneva motor show 2009

By Tim Pollard

First Official Pictures

02 March 2009 18:00

Ford is serving up a big-bang surprise at Geneva with the launch of the Iosis Max concept car. The third in a series of Iosis show cars, the Max affords our first view of the new 2011 Ford Focus, with a hint of next-gen 2010 C-Max thrown in for good measure. 

The Iosis Max looks just like the next-gen Focus at the front and heralds some important new styling treatments for all future Fords, its designers have told CAR. The lower trapezoidal grille, for instance, will in future feature these horizontal chromed strakes, echoing the feature lines on the bonnet, and the Blue Oval badge appears more prominently in the middle of the higher, Fiesta-style grille.

Get used to this face; the Focus is regularly the best-selling car in Britain…

If the front end styling of the Iosis Max smacks of new Focus, the rear of the car points to the C-Max replacement. Strip away the limegreen paint job, rear-view bullet cameras, those parallelogram-hinged, handclap doors and the madder excesses of the roof spoiler and you get a good idea of Ford’s next mid-sized people carrier.

The wacky doors arc open to reveal the guts of the Iosis Max concept car – and they’re not the only show-off doors at play here. The two-part boot opens in three distinct movements, either as a full tailgate (with the F1-inspired rear wing itself hinging amusingly from the roof) or as a smaller opening to load up flatpack furniture in a rammed Ikea car park.

Step inside the Iosis Max and you’ll enter a world even more alien than the exterior. Despite its people carrier pretensions, this is a strict four-seater and all four individual pews are crafted from carbonfibre and appear to levitate in thin air, supported as they are by beams linked to the centre spine of the car.

By Tim Pollard