JUST as no one goes to an ice-cream parlour and asks for simple vanilla anymore, no one needs to know how a Toyota will fare in a long-term test.

It will keep going, with nary an incident. For years.

Which is why Life! has had a more eclectic mix of cars as long-termers, such as a BMW 330i (made in Germany instead of South Africa), a Dodge Caliber and, now, a Ford S-Max.

The S-Max is a sharp-looking seven-seater made in Ford's Austrian plant in Gent. It is Ford's first compact MPV, a genre that is doing particularly well in Singapore.

Ford Motor, as your grand-daddy might have told you, has had a rich history of dependability, innovation and good old-fashioned value for money. Which was why the Model T and many of its successors managed to carve a tidy empire for Henry Ford and family.

Then, somewhere between the late 1970s and now, the great American icon began losing ground to the Japanese, the Koreans and pretty much everyone else in between.

Globally speaking, that is.

In places such as Australia, Britain and the truck-lovin' belt of the United States, there are hordes who are still fervently loyal to the Blue Oval.

In Singapore, Ford's position should really be stronger than it is. After all, the company set up shop here way back in 1926, assembling among other models, the Model T.

It opened its Bukit Timah plant in 1941. It was then the first full-fledged car assembly outfit in South-east Asia. Although production was interrupted by a surrender ceremony that could not be held anywhere else (we didn't have many hotels back then), the plant resumed operations after the war.

By the time it closed in 1980, Ford had made 150,000 vehicles in Singapore.

Despite its illustrious past here, Ford's lustre waned when it ? like almost every other Western make ? did not react fast or seriously enough to the arrival of the Japanese.

The management back then must have thought: "These chaps can't be for real. Didn't we just beat the crap out of them?"

(Pretty much the same disbelief greeting Chinese cars today.)

Jokes about Japanese cars with body panels made of recycled biscuit tins notwithstanding, Toyota and company soon overran Singapore.

To cut a long story short, here we are now ? with an S-Max on hand, to see, if you like, whether Ford has what it takes to storm Fortress Nippon.

The first impressions aren't completely encouraging. Within hours of taking it from Ford agent Regent Motors, the car's anti-lock braking system and traction control warning lamps light up.

The S-Max goes back to Regent Motors. It comes back on the same day, all fixed. At least the after-sales service is encouraging.

It has been nearly a week, and all is still fine with the MPV.

Unfair as it may seem, when something like that happens to a Toyota, people dismiss it as an isolated glitch. When it happens in a Ford, many will jump to other conclusions.

Which is why a long-term test is sometimes needed to separate discriminatory bias from fact.

For instance, you would think a made-in-Europe MPV would be a guzzler on account of its weight. In the case of the S-Max, that's only partly true.

The car is around 100kg heavier than the Toyota Picnic, but it is also a tad longer and wider. As for economy, the 2.3-litre Ford is not dramatically thirstier than the 2-litre Toyota, managing around 8 to 8.5km per litre in mixed city and highway driving.

The thing is, you would drive the S-Max with a bit more enthusiasm and verve than the Picnic. Stay tuned to find out why.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 16, 2008.