WHEN somethin' shakes in the S-Max neighbourhood, who d'ya call?

Regent Motors, of course. The Ford agent was quick to address the cabin cacophony that had invaded our long-termer. It picked the car up from us last Friday morning and by the time the car was delivered back to us in the evening, it was free of any shake, rattle or roll.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... let's rewind to the previous weekend when the trusty MPV did some serious mule duty.

A friend was moving home and needed a car with huge luggage space and a driver who was patient enough to make repeated trips from old flat to new flat.

I made the mistake of offering the services of the S-Max - actually all I did was brag about its cavernous luggage room once the second and third row of seats are flipped down.

Anyway, the car handled the assignment with elan - can't say the same about the driver though - and everything got to the new flat in one piece. However, perhaps as a result of lugging around so much weight, we started hearing noises in the cabin.

The rat-tat-tat from the right rear of the cabin played a concerto with the high-pitched squeak emanating from the vicinity of the front passenger's door. Nothing that the car's excellent music system couldn't drown, but it still did grate.

A quick call to Regent Motors fixed that. The car was picked up from our office one morning and was back, rattle free, before sundown the same day. No, they did not replace it with another car. We checked.

Aftersales service like this is almost unreal: competent, quick and free of charge. Okay, so it may have something to do with the fact that we're motoring writers, but still...

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Apr 12, 2008.