It’s finally happened. The last Ford Mondeo (in European terms at any rate) has rolled off the production line at Ford’s factory in Valencia, in Spain. It may sound odd to say of a car that was explicitly designed for mass appeal, and which sold some five million copies during its 29-year lifetime, but the death of the Mondeo feels personal to me. Deeply so.
Why? Well, because without it, I might not have the career I have today. Let me take you back to March 17th, 1993.
It was the year that saw the launch of the first Ford Mondeo. To mark this important new car launch, Autocar & Motor magazine — of which I was and remain a devoted reader — decided to put one to a savage test. Taking a new Mondeo, straight off the production line in Belgium, a team of journalists would drive it non-stop around Europe, for a week, racking up 20,000km of driving — a whole year’s worth — in just seven days. It would be a strenuous test of every part of the car, and it made for a great feature.
There was one particular part that stood out, at least for me. A photograph, taken of one of the teams of journalists, as they queued at some godforsaken hour at some godforsaken motorway services for some coffee and sandwiches that I suspect were not especially saken by god nor anyone else. One person, clad in a brown leather jacket, looked tired. No, not tired; knackered. No, not knackered; banjaxed. Looking at this photo, I had a sudden realisation — hey, this guy looks like me. Well, a bit anyway. I certainly had a brown leather jacket of similar batteredness. I could definitely look as tired and worn out as that. And I’d had plenty of awful sandwiches at that point (usually made, rather than bought, but still…).
The glamour of the work was stripped away, revealing that the humans beneath, the ones creating the words and images, were — perhaps, maybe, possibly, just about — not so very different from me. So maybe I could do this for a living? My mind was made up. I was going to be a motoring journalist. I just had to work out how…
Cork connection
Part of that ‘how’ was to nab an interview with a senior member of the car industry. Growing up in Schull, West Cork, I knew that Eddie Nolan, the then-chairman of Ford Ireland (strictly speaking Henry Ford & Sons Ltd) had a weekend and holiday home in the village. Through a contact, a teenage me tentatively asked if I could have an audience and one was duly granted.
Nolan was, and I don’t think his close associates will mind me saying this, cantankerous at the best of times. When I asked him what he thought the prospects were for the newest Ford, against its competition, he leaned forward and, dispensing entirely with PR-approved soundbites, said bluntly: “It’ll piss all over them.”
I didn’t get to drive a Mondeo for a few more years. Working in London, just after university, my grandparents visited and I rented a Mondeo — the facelift version, with the big, swooping headlights — in which to tour around with them.
Even in bog-basic, stripped-out rent-a-beater spec, the Mondeo’s remarkable DNA shone through. The sharp steering. The eager chassis balance. The little clip for holding a pen, down by the gear lever. I loved it. I cheered it on, every weekend in the summer, watching highlights of the British Touring Car Championship on telly, with the late, great Murray Walker’s high-octane, high-octave voice thrilling to the panel-bashing on display.
Eventually, I would start to drive Mondeos in a professional sense, starting with the square-rigged second-generation car, the one that was designed to look a bit like a ‘B5’ edition Volkswagen Passat. Less handsome than the original, I always thought, but bigger and roomier inside, and still good to drive. Fast, too, especially if you nabbed the hot-rod ST220 V6, or the torque-heacy ST TDCI diesel version, with their hyped-up engines and brakes made, apparently, heart-stoppingly, of cardboard.
Mondeo love
I actually met my wife in a Mondeo. I’d driven down to Waterford in a dark blue 1.8 LX estate, a 2001-reg car, to meet with friends, one of whom I was giving a lift back to Dublin. She asked if her friend could also have a lift, and lo and behold, the woman who would become my wife stepped into the back seat, and had to endure a two-hour journey of me droning on endlessly about cars. Still not sure why she picked me. Maybe it was the Mondeo?
The third generation Mondeo, launched in 2006, was arguably the Mondeo’s apogee. Already by then, premium-badge rivals such as the BMW 3 Series and Audi A4, were eating into the Mondeo’s sales and profits, and Ford responded by upping the quality levels, and getting Daniel Craig’s James Bond to briefly, somewhat laughably, spend a few minutes on screen driving one in Casino Royale.
I may not be Bond, but I did enjoy the heck out of a day driving a rare 2.5-litre turbo version (the engine from the old Focus ST) around the island of Sardinia on the original press launch — itself a Bond connection. It’s where Roger Moore’s Lotus launches itself into the sea. The Mondeo proved rather sticker on the tarmac than that, and also wasn’t having to evade a murderous helicopter.
Rot sets in
The rot set in with the fourth generation model, the current Mondeo, launched in 2014. Handsome it sure was (and is) but with SUVs now taking huge chunks out of saloon sales, the Mondeo wasn’t so much as on the back foot as it was dangling from the ropes at the side of the ring, while 4x4s and crossovers landed Ali-like punches on it. Ford twinned up this Mondeo with the US-market Fusion (the two cars were effectively twins), and probably saved some development cash doing so.
It must have saved some quality cash too, though, judging by the pirate-ship-like cacophony of squeaks, groans, and moans coming from the cabin. Most alarming was a distinct groan coming from the huge, panoramic glass roof every time I drove over a speed ramp.
Ford tried with the fourth Mondeo. The ST-Line model brought a bit of welcome visual aggression (if nothing in the way of a headlining engine), but the Hybrid model was always, rather obviously a bit of a lash-up. The severe reduction in boot space to fit the battery pack was a dead giveaway that the Mondeo belonged to a pre-electrification era.
Even using Mondeos and Fusions as mules to test and develop over-hyped autonomous car technology hasn’t given the Mondeo a reprieve from the automotive hangman’s noose. I figured its number was up a few years back when I drove the supposedly-posh Mondeo Vignale — all spangly chrome and soft leather. Ford wanted it to be a rival to BMW and Audi. Instead, it was an overworked disappointment — all fur coat and no underwear.
Budgets
Which is perhaps an unfair epitaph. I prefer to think of the Mondeo in its youth, that first 1993 model, and the tale of its chassis and steering development. The prototype car was being fettled and tweaked on roads in the Scottish Highlands by Ford’s legendary then-head of engineers, Richard Parry-Jones, and three-times F1 world champion, and long-time Ford champion, Jackie Stewart.
Apparently, a Ford bean-counter weighed in on the development, complaining about budget being allocated for steering work that he felt unnecessary. “OK” said Parry-Jones and Stewart; “You take one of the prototypes for a spin tonight, and if you’re happy with how it drives, you sign it off and we’ll call it finished.” Sneakily, the two men misaligned the headlights of the car before sending the hapless accountant out for a spin on a moonless night. He came back white-faced, shaking, and happy to rubber-stamp the extra budget for steering testing.
Can you imagine Elon Musk doing the same thing, mid-development of a new Tesla? Can you think of a modern SUV or crossover, whose steering and chassis responses have been carefully honed by a man who once conquered The Nurburgring, or the old Spa? A working-class car, a car name-checked by Tony Blair in 1997 as he sought to broaden UK Labour’s appeal to the masses, being that carefully fettled before going on sale?
An ordinary car
That’s the magic of the Mondeo. An ordinary car, that wasn’t ordinary at all.
However, we have some good news — Mondeo lives! (Hurrah!) But only for the Chinese market. (Hurr…boo?)
Ford has revealed the rather sleek and smart-looking new Mondeo at its design centre in Shanghai. “To design the next generation of a well-known nameplate such as Mondeo was a privilege and a challenge for our team,” said Maurizio Tocco, chief designer at Ford. “We wanted to respect and acknowledge the history which had come before us while elevating the customers’ experience to the next level. The starting point of the design is always the customer and looking for innovative ways to incorporate what they need and want into the design.”
You can kinda-sorta see the evolution from the outgoing European Mondeo (sold in the US as the Ford Fusion) in the styling of the new car, but it’s distinctly more muscular than the final Euro Mondeo, and that full-width grille is quite Hyundai-like. Around the back, there’s a kicked-up bootlid that adds a Kamm-tail look, while the brake lights have distinct Mustang-esque overtones.
It’s larger than the just-defunct Euro Mondeo (close to 5-metres long) and has a longer wheelbase, so space in the back should be impressive. That’s a critical metric for the Chinese car market, where there is still a significant market for owners who are driven, rather than drive themselves.
China is also one of the last market holdouts where four-door saloons are still big sellers. Indeed, last year, the Chinese market actually saw an overall rise in sales of four-door saloons which climbed by 7.1 per cent to a total of 9.93-million cars, almost matching the combined sales of SUVs and crossovers, which found 10.1-million sales. That means that saloon sales in China are actually out-pacing the market rise of 3.8 per cent last year.
China still loves its saloons, then, with models such as the Nissan Sylphy, Volkswagen Lavidia, and Toyota Levin (essentially the same as our four-door Corolla) regularly in the top-ten sales chart, and even topping it from time to time.
By contrast, in Europe, there’s not a single four-door saloon in the top-ten sales. The best-selling cars in our backyard are all hatchbacks and, yes of course, SUVs and crossovers. In the US, there are only two four-doors in the top-ten sellers list; the Toyota Camry and the Honda Civic.
Hence why there are no plans to sell the new Mondeo here or in the US (although there have been some rumours that the new car might just make it Stateside in limited numbers, if Ford thinks that the demand is there).
Surprisingly, given the massive growth in electric car sales in China, it looks as if the new Mondeo won’t be offered with battery power. Initially it will come with turbocharged 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre petrol engines, with a plug-in hybrid due later.
It will get something of a dramatic dashboard, though — borrowed from the (also China-only) Evos crossover, the Mondeo will get massive touchscreen that stretches almost the full width of the dash, combining a 12.3-inch instrument panel and a whopping 27-inch infotainment screen.
