A year ago I spent ages looking for the right 2-3 etc year old C-Max 2.0 auto. Never found one good enough despite looking at dozens for months and travelling for miles. I was really after the facelift model, I thought that the Zetec's were a tad plain but plentiful (so I avoided those), the (pre facelift) Ghias nice but had an electronic parking brake, and the Titanium's rare. I found a couple of "fresh & right" cars but one Titanium had no service history (so likely no remaining Ford warranty would be honoured), and a very decent Zetec (by now I was getting less choosy) had been painted on 1 side for reason u/k. Be aware that many C-Max autos @ 3 years old will have been Motability cars - might be a good or a bad thing?

I ended up with a new i30 diesel auto - maybe no bad thing given the fuel prices.

I have a 2.0 Focus estate 07 reg with auto and the gearbox is fine so far at 32,000 miles.

According to Haynes its the same box as the 1.6 but the shifter arrangement is different to the Mk 1 Focus auto. (4F27E) Frankly, its easier to use it as a full auto rather than using the sequential shifts. Our Mk 1 Focus is also auto and its fine at 68k miles too. As far as I know its not related to the awful cvt auto fitted to the diesel version for a short time.

I looked at C Max's but found that as I do not need the additional height for luggage, the extra length in the Focus estate luggage area compared with the CMax (around 50 mm) is far more useful.

I have also been surprised that the traction in the recent snows was better on the mK 2 Focus despite wider wheels & lower profile tyres.