Bally's Blog: Meet the new Ford Mondeo
The house move was already upon us, the house was full of boxes and I was tired of eating my dinner off of paper plates…. It was time to go so really there was no better than for the Ford Mondeo estate to arrive.
There is just simply bags of room in the boot space when all the seats are in use and loads more when the rear seats are folded down. There is no doubt, we tested the car’s ability to move everything from the lawnmowers, golf clubs, vinyl albums ( all 1790 of them) and bags upon bags of , well just stuff! Why, as a nation, do we have a fascination with stuff! What’s in that bag? I ask Lorraine as we head to the skip, “Stuff, she says, and again, more stuff. I am sure we could have got the kitchen sink in this estate if we had tried however, we only moved the stuff.
It would be wrong of me to give you the impression that we only tested the Mondeo on short runs with the rear seats folded down heading to the recycling centre. Heaven forbid no, we had a couple of long drives, in fact, over the test period I covered just under 500 miles.
I loved my time with the Ford Mondeo estate and I could be tempted to go with one of the lower spec models when renewing my car later in the year.
The Ford Mondeo ST-Line estate is one good looking car, the ST body styling kit gives the estate a really sporty look. It is available in a variety of trims with a choice of engines and the one I was sampling was the ST Line estate with the 2.0 litre TDCi diesel engine, with all wheel drive and the automatic powershift gearbox. There is something that I found so relaxing about driving this Ford Mondeo, especially on long motorway journeys. It could be the combination of the smooth automatic gearbox and the fine diesel engine and we agreed that we did not need the shift paddles on the steering wheel, as it was best left to get on with it.
This is a big city car but so easy to handle, with first class ride comfort. Should the weather turn nasty, the AWD system will mean there is lots of grip to cope.
Coming off the assembly line in Spain, the price for the standard version comes in at £31,295 which I considered to be a good price, however the model we were driving had a few added extras…. Ford DAB, NAV system, emergency assistance, rock metallic alloy wheels, a mini spare wheel, front sports seats, ambient lighting, LED running lights, the SYNC 3 system with 8 inch touchscreen and sports suspension. In addition you get a quick clear heated front windscreen, (a must in Scotland!) power operated windows, hill launch assist, alarm and a tyre pressure monitoring system and it didn’t stop there. The test car also came with a detachable towbar, power tailgate, rearview camera, adaptive headlights, rear privacy glass, lane keeping aid, traffic sign recognition and blind spot monitoring. All these bring the price up to almost £37,000. A friend commented “What, almost £40,000 for a Mondeo? “ Well yes, but this is really premium sector.
I loved my time with the Ford Mondeo estate and I could be tempted to go with one of the lower spec models when renewing my car later in the year.
Tech Talk
0-62- 9.5 secs
6-speed automatic gearbox
MPG-combined, 55.3mpg
Ins group -31
Max speed-137mp