More Mondeo for your money

The third and latest generation of the Ford Mondeo is appearing in UK showrooms this month in its usual saloon, five door hatch and estate car body styles.

The all-new Mondeo is longer, adopting the platform of the Ford S-Max and Galaxy MPVs, it is wider and marginally higher. It benefits from £700 of extra equipment over outgoing models, including an Electronic Stability Program, yet on average it is priced £300 below the previous equivalent models.

A conservative re-styling with better equipment levels and an obvious move up market with a premium brand marketing message might have been the right time for Ford to change the name of its long serving D segment product.

Not so thinks Roelant de Waard, chairman and managing director for Ford of Britain. He said at the UK media launch of the new range, “Changing any model name is a big deal, it’s the product that makes the difference not the name.

"The new Mondeo is aspirational and we are not trying to compete with high priced badges but we are offering a premium experience. D-segment customers appreciate quality products and the new Mondeo will give them that.”

He added, “When Ford changed from using the Escort name to Focus it wasn’t an evolution of their C-segment product, it was a revolution, the Focus was so different.

"In the past for a car of this size we have used the Consul, Corsair, Cortina and Sierra names but Mondeo is still on a journey using the same path. We are now giving it a higher quality and the customer a premium experience.”

“Mondeo Man doesn’t really exist except in the minds of the media. Customers think the Mondeo is a really good car and we have sold nearly 1.2 million of them in the UK since the model was introduced in 1993.

"The Mondeo has always been in the top ten selling cars list since its launch and the UK is the largest single market in the World for Mondeo. We sold over 48,000 of them last year and so far this year, even under the run-out programme, we have sold over 22,000 units. Our customers do not have a badge fetish ” he said.

“In a full year I still expect to sell 48,000 Mondeos in the UK even though the segment is getting smaller as customers transfer to MPVs or down size to C-segment cars.

"The segment is struggling overall but it still accounts for 450,000 annual sales. Customers who want this size of car are now demanding a higher build quality and the new Mondeo is the answer.”

“The first three months of production of right hand drive Mondeo models is already sold and these early orders show me there is a high increase in demand for the higher specification versions. This also tells me people want to be seen in a Mondeo”, he added.

Other facts and figures released by Ford show the Mondeo was the best selling diesel car in the UK from 2003 to 2005. The UK takes 32 per cent of European Mondeo production volume, around 70 per cent of UK Mondeo sales are diesel models and 70 per cent of sales are to fleet and business users.

The body style split in the UK shows that traditionally five door Mondeo take 72 per cent of its sales, estate 24 per cent and four door saloon just 4 per cent. However Ford say there is a change in the buying patterns in this sector with estate cars and saloons increasing their share of sale and this is even more evident with premium models.

The new Mondeo’s most likely competitors will be the Vauxhall Vectra, the Peugeot 407, the new Renault Laguna, Honda Accord and the highly rated VW Passat, but with the move upmarket then the BMW, Mercedes and Audi models will also come into play.

The new Mondeo has a simplified specification line-up. Edge level with manual features should account for 29 per cent of sales, Zetec, the most popular specification level with power features, will take 33 per cent of sales, Ghia 20 per cent and Titanium around 18 per cent.

There is a comprehensive range of engines with four Duratorq TDCi diesel and five Duratec petrol units ranging from 110PS to 220PS power output. A new Durashift six-speed automatic transmission will be added to the options this year to compliment the current five and six-speed manual gearboxes.

Prices range from £14,995 for the Edge 1.6i five door up to £24,195 for the Titanium X 2.5i estate. The likely best selling model will be the Mondeo Zetec 2.0 TDCi 140PS five door model with a six-speed manual transmission priced at £18,395 on the road.

Read the review of the new Ford Mondeo here.

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