Possibly the most widely-quoted statistic about the Mondeo these days is the fact that among private, non-fleet buyers it is less popular than the BMW 3-Series. On the face of it, this is extraordinary news. Surely it would require an above-average sensibility about cars to appreciate the ways in which the BMW is more finely crafted than the Ford? And if the perceived quality of the two badges is part of the reason, can there really be so many people who are prepared to pay so much extra just to impress the neighbours?As has always been the case with mid-sized Fords, the Mondeo is functional without being especially dramatic. There is a tremendous amount of room for all occupants, and with the rear seats down the car will swallow a lot of large and oddly-shaped bits and pieces, as I found to my advantage during this test. It doesn't look very stylish from the outside, though, and the interior design is quite subdued, not so much because it's subtly understated as because Ford seems to have reckoned that what it has produced here is good enough for the sort of person who might buy a Mondeo.Driving the current car can be a bit of a chore. Previous generations had a surprising grace about them, but the latest Mondeo feels more laboured. In 2.0 Zetec specification, as tested here, it heaves and wallows to a mild extent (as if it's set too high, and sure enough there does seem to be a remarkable amount of ground clearance to judge by the gaps between the tyres and the wheelarches).Soft and underdamped, it also manages to transmit a great deal of tarmac unevenness into the cabin; during my first few miles with the car I thought I'd failed to notice that it was running on very low-profile tyres, but a glance at the rubber at my next stop showed that this isn't the case at all. It must take some doing to give a car the same ride quality disadvantage you would get with low profiles without conferring any of the handling gains.And here's another strange oversight. The two-litre 16-valve petrol engine is a decent performer (though after several weeks of driving mostly turbo diesels I missed their mid-range punch) and it operates very quietly up to a point. That point occurs when the engine reaches a speed of about 3000rpm, at which point some sort of resonance chimes in, adding a very persistent boom to the interior noise level.3000rpm in top gear equates to almost exactly 70mph, so motorway cruising becomes more tiresome than it need be - and surely a Mondeo, of all cars, should be a comfortable motorway cruiser?Coming to the car on a frosty morning, I was glad of the heated windscreen and door mirrors, which are part of the standard package, and the heated seats, which were among a great many options supplied on this vehicle. The list also included ESP, satellite navigation (relatively inexpensive as these things go at £1000), metallic paint, a telephone pack, parking sensors and automatic adjustment of the lights, wipers and interior mirror.The headlights, as well as coming on of their own accord if you set them that way, were xenon units - another extra, but worth considering. On main beam they are very strong, and they illuminate the road immediately ahead of the car so effectively that I wondered if I had the foglights on by mistake (not true, as it turned out).All these extras took the price from £17,300 to £20,525, and I had a problem with that. I could imagine this Mondeo as a £17,300 car, if not a brilliant one, but I found it less easy to accept as something that costs more than three grand on top of that, not least because after paying all that money you would still be left sitting in seats with cloth upholstery.A 3-Series would cost a lot more to start with, and BMW certainly knows how to charge for optional extras, but somehow this breaching of the £20,000 barrier made the gap between the two cars seem relatively narrow. Maybe it's not just the badge that makes the difference after all.
Our Rating
