The New Mondeo is finally upon us, having been on sale in the US for a while now, it's finally on sale in Europe after some lengthy disputes about moving production from one factory to another.
Today, I went down to my local Ford dealership, who just happened to have a top of the range Mondeo Titanium Diesel estate for me to have a go on. Following on from the Focus's and Fiesta's lead, the new Mondeo has slick lines and that distinctive Ford grille. On the inside it looked very impressive too. Featuring an 8 inch touch screen with Ford's SYNC 2 system, Sat Nav, Bluetooth phone connectivity, voice activation, DAB radio and 2 USB sockets, one of which will charge a large tablet, such as an iPad.
The touch screen shows info about what road you're on, whether your phone is connected, information about the radio station or what music you're listening too and information about the air conditioning (which on the Titanium is dual zone climate controlled air con) by default, but I have been informed this can be changed. A nice touch, although not entirely necessary, you can change the picture on the back ground in a similar way you can on a touch screen phone.
In front of the drivers seat sits a good sized steering wheel with buttons for various commands adorning it, a lot of things can be controlled by these buttons or by voice activation, the model I test drove had cruise control, climate control and a plethora of external sensors to help keep you on the straight and narrow. The dash board was all digital as well, including the speedo and rev counter, and displays all the information the driver needs including next instructions if you have the sat nav on.
A feature I've not seen on Ford's before is the electronic hand brake system. Rather than having a lever next to or behind the gear stick, it has a button you can press to toggle the hand brake on or off, push down to turn it off, pull it up to turn it back on again, it feels a bit like the electric window switches, which is no bad thing.
The car comes in various trim levels including: Style, Zetec, Titanium and Titanium Hybrid. Five door hatchback and estate body styles and the following engine options: 1.5 litre EcoBoost (160PS) and 2.0 litre EcoBoost (240PS) Petrol or 1.6 litre Duratorq Econetic (115PS), 2.0 litre Duratorq (150PS or 180PS) TDCi engines. Or a 2.0 litre Ti-VCT (177PS) on the Hybrid. Of course there is the choice of having a manual or automatic gearboxes, some automatics have F1 style flappy paddles on the steering wheel.
The feel of the drive and the driving position are both good and once you get behind the wheel, it feels as comfortable to drive as many smaller cars and the handling around bends is good. The damping out of various bumps along the route was excellent and was better than the Focus I also test drove, although the Focus's handling and damping was still superb. Although I have to say, I test drove the Mondeo first and the Focus seemed quite ordinary in comparison, driving it on the exact same route straight afterwards. That's not to say that the Focus is a bad car, because it's still a very good motor, and an improvement on the previous model.
In my opinion, Ford rivals such as Vauxhall, Renault, Peugeot, etc. are up for a fight with the Mondeo, it's been a long wait for it coming, but is it worth the wait? I think it is, it looks nicer and more refined than a lot of its rivals and owners of previous models of Mondeo are definitely in for a treat if they replace theirs with this new model.
