No sorry, they feel absolutely massive and ungainly despite just being quite tall - they wallow everywhere, the (diesel at least) gear ratios are judged terribly, they are particularly unrefined, brakes are terrible, steering is terible and the wheel has a horrid covering, seats are terrible.
It gets tiring reading everything from Ford is great when having driven them myself I really can't agree. They are a car for people who have totally given up in life.
I do think the S Max is pretty rotten to drive, but at least it is better than most of its size and that's more a case of reality vs what you read about them- these are just rotten.
Have you actually driven one?
Edit - OP apologies this wasn't really meant to be a rant about how bad your new choice of car is. If all you want is some sort of transport(which it sounds like is the case) I'm sure it will be fine.
I'll counter the above with - the sliding door is quite good
I take everything you said with a pinch of salt to be fair. I have actually drove it and not just talked/looked/heard about it. The gearbox is extremely light and smooth, and the ratios were spot on. The steering was nice as it was light but didn't feel vacant. Road noise was better than my Lexus IS220d SE (probably due to it not having a tractor engine). It felt rather small to drive in my opinion, I did not have to adjust my driving style from driving the Lexus really, though in the car park the turning circle didn't seem very good, but hardly a deal breaker.
The wing mirrors are a little small I suppose, but I have noticed the ones on my Lexus are like Dumbo's ears and bloody massive so you see everything looking in them.
If you can be bothered to take your c max hate out of your head for 1 second and look at the video below from around 2min30ish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6k0fuzRKvw
And for the reason of not getting an estate was simply space and height. If you've ever wrestled a 2-3 year old out of a car seat before you will know space is everything, and when you have to do it 10-20 times a week you thank god for the space.