Farewell, Ford Mondeo

FORGET oil, diamonds or the mysterious underground gas that's been getting you so fracking angry lately. I reckon the world’s most valuable commodity is attention.

Studies have shown that while attention occurs naturally in all human brains – even the ones of reality TV stars – it runs out completely if you try to mine it for more than about 45 minutes or so. Once that’s gone, all you’re left with a dangerous void of mentally planning your next holiday, pondering the plot of Sherlock and wondering whether you really did lock your front door when you left the house this morning.

Even a few seconds of not having an abundant supply of attention at your disposal can cause all sorts of problems. I know this, because that’s roughly how long it took for another driver to write my FordMondeo off beyond repair.

Regular readers might recall how proud I was to finally depart the 1990s and plump my posterior onto the leather lined throne of something modern for a change. The 2.0 litre Ghia X might have been 12 years old but it came stashed with an armada of gizmos so extensive it’d make viewers of The Gadget Show proud. Electric seats and an electric sunroof. Cruise control and a six CD autochanger. It had all of these things, and just about everything else besides.

Yet none of these gadgets could have prevented its fate on that dark evening in deepest Peterborough, as I gradually drew to a stop on the approach to a roundabout somewhere near the A1. The only clue I had that a rather rushed sales manager was about to indulge in a spot of creative parking – as in parking his company 3-Series half a foot into the Mondeo’s rear bumper – was the fleeting glimpse of a set of headlights in the rear view mirror, racing towards me through the darkness.

It is, to my mind, the worst kind of collision you can be involved in; the sort which you can do absolutely nothing about, other than watch it happen. You can be the best driver in the world (which, incidentally, I’m definitely not) and it still isn’t going to stop an errant Audi ploughing into your pride and joy. 

For the sake of driving too fast, too close and not nearly attentively enough, you end up causing weeks of headaches for people you’ve never met. In fact, having a car written off through no fault of my own is getting off lucky; what would have happened if Beemer Boy had been doing the full 70mph he was legally entitled to on that stretch of road?

So the Mondeo is gone. Luckily, I’m not.

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Life On Cars highlights of 2013

2013’s been a petrolhead year defined largely by three words for me – Classic Car Weekly.

Thanks largely to landing my dream job in full-time motoring journalism back in April, most of the motoring experiences Life On Cars has encountered have involved blasting into the past in cars which are usually older than I am. This year’s been an incredible automotive adventure, taking me everywhere from the Scottish Highlands to the southern coast of Spain in search of classic car stories. I can reveal, however, that the issue which got Life On Cars readers talking the most this year was rooted firmly in this blog’s home in the North West; the ongoing saga of whether the Woodvale Rally will ever return to RAF Woodvale.

Some of the highlights from a year peppered with petrolhead moments you might be familiar with – others, unless you’re a regular reader of Classic Car Weekly, you probably won’t be. Here are ten of the moments I’m not going to forget in a hurry…

1) Discovering it’s never too cold to drive with the roof down

January is normally a time for wrapping up warm, snuggling up on the sofa and nudging the thermostat into firmly toasty territory. It definitely isn’t the time for heading into a totally deserted corner of the North Wales countryside and dropping the roof on a (much-missed) Mazda MX-5. The temperature, indicating by the mate’s Saab 9-3 following closely behind, was a chilly -1 degrees Celsius.

Not that I cared, because the MX-5 on those roads was a blast. If you’ve got a convertible, wrap up warm, drop the hood, and get out there!

2) Blasting across the New Forest in a Jaguar XK150

Considering it was only my second day at Classic Car Weekly, this was definitely the sort of motoring journalism small boys dream of – a classic Jaguar with lines so fluid you could almost drink them, empty roads to enjoy it on and an incredibly beautiful bit of England to soak up at the same time.

To be honest, I was expecting another Jaguar I drove that same afternoon – the first E-type I’d ever experienced from behind the wheel – to be the highlight, but it was the simpler charms of the older XK I’ll never forget. The howl of the XK straight-six as I nailed it through the New Forest is something that’ll stay with me forever.

3) Listening to this engine

 

Regular readers will already know I’m well acquainted with the charms of the MG BGT. You might also know that – thanks to a childhood spent in the company of old Range Rovers – that I’ll never get tired of listening to the lumbering burble of a Rover V8 engine.

Seeing and hearing the two in the same package for the first time, however, was a treat for the eyeballs and eardrums alike. Hit play on this short video I made, and see what I mean…

4) Finding out the only way is Up!

An ongoing joke at Classic Car Weekly is that I’ve driven the VW Up pool car not just more than anyone else, but probably more than I have my own cars this year!

While I found myself behind the wheel of Wolfsburg’s 1.0 litre wonder for all sorts of trips to cover shows in the North West, for ferrying colleagues to the Goodwood Revival and – for reasons I’m still not entirely sure of – for a slightly mad return trip to Cornwall, I’ve always enjoyed the fizzy personality of VW’s smallest offering.

For every moment its lack of outright oomph, its tiny boot and its impossibly small fuel tank frustrated me, there was another when the bark of its three-cylinder engine and entertaining handling proved utterly captivating. Put it this way – it is the sort of city car that doesn’t feel outclassed on the Cat and Fiddle pass.

5) Finally trading up in the repmobile stakes

This time last year, I was lauding the vaguely indestructible qualities of the 1995 Rover 214SEi, which I bought back in 2010 for just £300, and I’ve been treated to more of the same throughout 2013. While it’s gone everywhere from Peterborough and London to Bristol and North Yorkshire without so much of a whisper of breakdown – and with a bit of newfound fame in Classic Car Weekly.

The increasingly noisy transmission whine and the quietly creeping onset of rot, however, showed that after three years the old dog, which I’d only ever bought for smoking around Southport in, was beginning to feel the strain of its new life of shooting across Britain.

After two final missions, visiting Classics On The Green in Watford and the Severn Valley Railway’s classic car day in Kidderminster, I finally traded up to its thirstier-but-faster replacement – a 2001 Ford Mondeo Ghia X.

Finally, I’d put my money where my mouth was and bought the big saloon I’ve always recommended to anyone who’d listen. It’s superb.

 6) Thundering up Blackpool seafront – in a Chevrolet Corvette

If Blackpool is Britain’s answer to Las Vegas, then surely the ideal classic for experiencing the Illuminations is a big, all American classic with a big V8 and an open roof. Cue a 1980 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, even if getting it to the resort meant conquering left-hand-drive first by thundering across the Pennines from Harrogate to get it there.

It might have had an appetite for Esso’s finest and drive up a cold, rainy seafront involved never venturing past 25mph, but it was the most enjoyable bits of motoring I’ve ever done. Raucous, traditional and just a little bit showy – a bit like Blackpool, then!

7) Driving an Aston Martin for the first time

While it might not have been the car I enjoyed driving most in 2013 – take a bow, Suzuki SC100 ‘Whizzkid’ – there is a certain pub brag factor about getting behind the wheel of an Aston Martin for the first time. Particularly if it’s a Timothy Dalton-era V8 which uses its 5.3 litre V8 to play a never-ending game of tug of war with the horizon. After doing my best not to get distracted by the James Bond connotations, I found myself truly enjoying its burly demeanour and its thunderous engine note. 2013 also saw me driving my first Rolls-Royce.

Maybe 2014 will be the year I finally get to pop my Ferrari cherry?

8) Seeing Life On Cars printed in a national publication

 Since its launch way back in 2009, Life On Cars has been limited to this humble motoring blog, a series of online emagazines and a weekly column in The Champion series of newspapers in the north west. Seeing a column from Yours Truly printed in Classic Car Weekly back in August, then, was a particularly proud moment. It’s also been great to continue contributing my views to The Champion on a weekly basis, even if a lot of the time those reflections have been e-mailed in from deepest Cambridgeshire!

9) Dressing up in a silly outfit at the Goodwood Revival

I already knew the Goodwood Revival is an unashamed nostalgia trip into the high-octane era of motor racing in the Fifties and Sixties. What I didn’t know, however, was how much fun it is, or how seriously the period charm gets taken. Luckily, I’d donned my best tweed in a semi-successful attempt to look like a period newspaper reporter, as you can see from the not-at-all disturbing shot, and spent three days lapping up the best-before-1966 feel of it all.

Weirdly, thanks to the rigours of helping to produce a bumper report on the show, I didn’t see a single race during a weekend of historic motorsport, and yet I still fell in love with the event. In fact, the only thing which ruined it slightly was the minority of visitors who chose to turn up in tracksuits and trainers. Ban them!

 10) Finding out Petrolhead is a universal language, wherever you go

Until now, my passion of taking pictures and chatting to people at car shows has been limited largely to the North West, but this year my show visits have spanned the nation – and further afield. By far and away the bit of being a car nut I love most is chatting to people about the classics they own, and finding out why it is they love the cars they do. It’s a passion which car lovers, whether they’re in the Scottish Higlands, the North West, the heart of London or tranquil towns in the West Country, have all shared.

It even works abroad too, as a trip to Barcelona to cover Auto Retro proved. Even if the people there, while fluent in Petrolhead, had virtually no grasp of English. Ooops!

 Look out for more of David Simister’s motoring mishaps in both Classic Car Weekly and The Champion throughout 2014. Life On Cars wishes both of its readers a happy New Year

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My name is David and I'm a fuel economy addict

MY EYES light up as I get ever bigger readouts emerging from the dashboard. Over the past few weeks, the cut ‘n’ thrust of the morning commute has made a numbers junkie out of me.

Only it isn’t the need for speed or a readiness for revs and redlines that’s got me hooked. It’s the cheap-looking digital display – seemingly stolen from a Casio calculator – that tells me what I’m getting for my gallon.

Regular readers will know that earlier this summer I chucked a grand in the direction of a 51-plate Ford Mondeo. It’s a Ghia X which means it comes with electric everything, a feisty foursome of leather seats and the joys of cruise control, but by far and away its most impressive feature is the two litre beast which lives beneath the bonnet. While I’ll never get bored of its silky smoothness or the 148 Dagenham-bred horses which haul it along, it’s the fuel economy which proves so frustratingly addictive.

Every drive is a mission to eke another tenth of a mile to the gallon out of it. Thanks to a crummy digital readout between the speedo and the rev counter, I have inadvertently become the polar opposite of a boy racer, completely obsessed with fuel economy.

This, by the way, isn’t my attempt to get all politically trendy and jump on the cost-of-living debate. Fuel’s expensive whatever you’re driving, and the Mondeo is always doing somewhere in the region of 34 miles to the gallon. That’s exactly what my much lighter Mazda MX-5 used to get from its 1.6 litre engine, so for a thumping great two litre to get that from a far heavier saloon is, in my book, extraordinary.

But it’s never enough because that display compels you to try and beat your own record every time you go for a drive. Why do 34 to the gallon when you can do 34.1?

It’s ridiculous; it’s the fastest and most powerful car I’ve ever owned and yet every morning I drive it to work like an elderly parish priest, gently caressing the gas pedal and politely declining overtaking opportunities because of the cranial rush you get from being awarded an extra tenth of the mile to the gallon. On one afternoon, I actually got my photographer friend in the passenger seat to take a shot of that glorious moment when I got 35 whole miles to the gallon. For reasons I'm still not entirely sure of, it mattered.

The first step to dealing with an addiction is talking about it. I’m a fuel economy addict, but I guess it’s better than being hooked on speed.

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Mondeo takes on the Lake District

 

THEY criss-cross the Cumbrian mountains around Derwent Water, chucking in plenty in the way of tight corners and challenging inclines. They give just about any car 23 miles of some of the most challenging motoring in Britain.

They are the Honister and Newlands Passes, and they turned out to be the perfect place to put the Mondeo to the test.

Earlier this week you might have read that I've added a 51-plate Ghia X - bought for a grand - to the Life On Cars fleet, meaning I've got more in-car gadgets at my fingertips than I've ever normally been used to. Admittedly, one of them's aready given up the ghost, with the six-CD autochanger refusing point blank to either play shiny musical discs or go hunting over the airwaves for BBC Radio 2, but replacing it with a single-CD job means I can at least take advantage of the superbly crisp speakers. I'm also particularly loving the cruise control system, which meant the blast up the M6 up to the Lake District was astonishingly easy work.

 

Yet once I'd peeled off the motorway and found some proper roads to play with, it was one thing in particular which really stood out on the Mondeo. The 145bhp from its 2.0 litre, 16 valve engine.

Out on the really demanding roads between Keswick and Buttermere, the leather-lined family favourite was an absolute revelation. Admittedly, the best thing I've ever piloted along these mountain passes was a brand new Lotus Elise S, closely followed by an original Mini and my old, much-missed MX-5, but the Mondeo impressed me hugely through its combination of mid-range torque to blast you up the steep straights, and Focus-but-bigger dynamics to keep me entertained through the bends. How could something so big and so heavy, I wondered, be so much fun?

It might not be the definitive gospel of driving fun - for that, you've really got to go for something lighter, smaller and more specialised - and pushing on is only ever going to give you mild understeer, but the Mondeo more than survived trial by Cumbria, with the tough and twisting roads showing it's got a fun streak running through its steering and handling.

The best bit about visiting Cumbria, however, is that when you've finishing haring around the mountain passes you can go to the Lakeland Motor Museum, which I've already mentioned is a superb afternoon out even if you aren't a petrolhead.

Among the highlights, for me at least, was checking out the Land Rover Series One used as a support vehicle during Donald Campbell's world speed record attempts on land and water, fittingly finished in Bluebird colours.

Even though the Mondeo's impressed me hugely with its speed, its handling and its gadgets, I know which I'd rather have in my dream garage!

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A new arrival on the Life On Cars fleet!

A full flotilla of electric windows, heated leather seats, cruise control, a heated front windscreen and a stereo that swallows six CDs at any given moment.

That's the sort of specification that would've made an early Lexus owner a little envious, and that's before I get to the electrically adjustable seats, the electric sunroof and air conditioning that leaves you cooler than Steve McQueen on a skiing trip. It also comes with plenty in the way of mid-range whallop from beneath the bonnet, and a dynamism that'll make a BMW owner blush (even though they'd never to admit to it).

Welcome to the club class world of the Ford Mondeo 2.0 Ghia X. Specifically, the one I've just bought. For a grand.

Why have I gone for a Blue Oval badged family saloon, particularly when I'm not a family man? Firstly, because the car that's been my everyday wheels of choice - my Rover 214SEI - is approaching the end of its life as a useful commuting tool. It's been a fine companion and I've grown to love its easygoing vibe, its tasteful half leather seats and plastiwood trim, and its utter refusal to break down, even in a snowdrift in deepest Cumbria. But ever since my offices moved from Southport to Peterborough and my new place of residence became the outside lane of the A1, this £300, 17-year-old slice of Anglo-Japanese engineering has been operating beyond its brief.

What I really needed, I figured, was something with oomph sufficient to deal with all the motorway work I've been assigned of late. A task the Mondeo was born to tackle.

My particular car might have done more than 100,000 miles in its dozen summers of existence, but it's also been serviced on the dot by the only owner it's had from new, and had every worn component replaced with a near religious devotion to reliability. As a result, it actually feels tighter than some cars I've driven with half the mileage.

More importantly - and to revisit something I wrote earlier this year - everyone I know who really knows their stuff on cars rates the Mondeo. The Great British Public might have moved to the Nissan Juke at one end and the 3-Series BMW on the other, leaving the Ford favourite lingering in a sales figures no man's land, but every Mondeo has always demonstrated that family cars can be finely balanced things which revel in a good corner or two. A finely balanced thing which, by the way, comes with absolutely every gadget you could possibly want - most of which are expensive extras in a BMW 320i.

So was I right to opt for a Ford as the Rover's eventual successor? Is it a belting saloon car bargain? Or have I bought a 12-year-old, 108,000 mile breakdown catastophe just waiting to happen?

Watch this space...

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If the Ford Mondeo is brilliant nobody will notice

HERE'S a bit of a motoring prediction for 2013. If Ford's new Mondeo is any good not one of you will bat an eyelid.

Which is a shame, because I reckon chances are it will be. This year the Mondeo celebrates its 20th anniversary - no really, it has been around that long - but take a look at the sharp end of the car sales charts and it's notable only by its absence. The best selling saloon in Britain is the BMW 3 Series.

This says more about the people who buy cars than it does about the cars themselves. When the Mondeo came out petrol cost 43p a litre and the sort of souls you'd see driving them hadn't bought them; they were given them by their fleet managers, which I think partly explained why the Mondeo always got such a kicking in the customer satisfaction surveys. If you buy a car privately you cherish it because you chose it carefully and paid for it with your own money; if it's a repmobile you're not going to be as bothered. Unless it breaks, in which case you - and your bosses - will be furious.

I also reckon, though I'm happy to be proven otherwise, that there's never been a bad Mondeo. Sure, there'll have been an iffy special edition or two in the car's 20 year history and obviously some are better than others but I've always thought the basic package - sensible saloon practicality and Ford value for money mixed with a dash of driving fun - has a certain something. I'll let you into a little secret; everyone I know who really knows their stuff on cars likes the Mondeo.

These days, though, the Mondeo and its ilk are an an endangered breed, and it's not just the £1.30 litre a petrol prices pushing the few remaining reps into family hatches instead. Mondeo Man these days is buying his own car with his own money, and if he isn't ploughing his hard earned into an infinitely trendier Nissan Qashqai than he's got the choice of the BMW 3 Series or the Ford Mondeo. I'll say that again; BMW or Ford. Even if the new Mondeo looks like an Aston Martin Rapide that shrank in the wash - which, amazingly, it does - it doesn't stand a chance.

Keen to find out what all the fuss is about, I've driven the new 3 Series and would like to tell you that it's rubbish and that you should buy a Mondeo instead. Only I can't, because it's brilliant.

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