Opinion: Mondeo – the end of the sales rep’s special
A golden comet fired in 1962 will extinguish after a 60-year flight, as the Ford Mondeo goes off sale in 2022
The Ford Mondeo’s story begins well before 1993, when Ford’s billion-dollar car was released to the world. Instead it begins 31 years before that, with the launch of a car codenamed “Archbishop”. The Cortina’s arrival launched Ford UK on a golden trajectory of success. For a good decade the Cortina was simply unassailable, its sales domination regularly scoring it a 10- to 12% market share. That’s unheard of today.
The Cortina dominated partly because there was less choice, partly because its main competitor British Leyland was failing and partly because it became the favoured choice of fleet managers. This was in the days before the company car driver could choose his own wheels. But the main reason it sold so well is that its styling was always bang on, and because the hierarchy of derivatives was not only easy to understand, but made it easy for personnel to dish out rewards to their reps with a trim upgrade.
Ford’s tinsel artistes always made sure that you could tell a base from an L, or an XL, or a GXL, their palette including chrome edgings, dashes of matt black, anodized panels, slashes of cabin plasti-wood, racier wheel trims and vinyl roofs. So your pay grade was parked on your driveway, your aspiration the quad- headlight, Rostyle wheel, vinyl-capped GXL.
After four ever-mightier iterations of the Cortina (and its less successful German Taunus counterpart), Ford finally decided that it must modernize the simple mechanicals of a car increasingly criticized for being miles behind the technical curve. The Sierra breezed in on a gust of aerodynamic excellence, Ford told us, and a cabin designed with “Man and Machine in Perfect Harmony”.
The round paneled, shovel-nosed, fastback Sierra looked remarkable after the boxy Cortina, its thousands of wind tunnel hours massively cutting the Cortina’s drag coefficient to 0.34 – the same, whisper it, as the boxy Alfa Giulia saloon of 1962. Never mind the numbers –the effect was startling. Ford’s large family car sales fell away, its traditional customers initially unable to stomach the change, in spite of the still traditional mechanicals. The Sierra remained rear-drive and propelled by the Cortina’s gruff engines, but it did have independent rear suspension. More importantly, it was much better to drive, and genuinely did have a well- planned interior. It also continued Ford’s trim hierarchy.
That wasn’t enough to stop the jelly-mould floundering, a panicked Ford soon triggering a light facelift. Which helped, as did familiarity. Some versions of the Sierra became legendary, not only the RS Cosworth and its famously unsubtle wing, but also the excellent XR4x4. The competition got ever sharper, however, the thrusting front-drive Vauxhall Cavalier and finely-sprung Peugeot 405 increasingly exposing its creaky mechanicals. Ford’s well-packaged, well-priced average car strategy was failing. Spectacularly so in the case of the Mk4 Escort, which this magazine exposed for the progress-free sham that it was.
From that point on, those within Ford who really did want to build decent cars began to get their way, and to everyone’s surprise the 1993 Mondeo was the first solid proof of their success. Its look was a bit styling-by- committee – years later, Ford admitted that this actually was the case – but its mechanical ingredients had been cooked with a deeply satisfying flourish. Satisfying not only for Ford, which collected numerous important gongs with the car, but for anyone who drove a Mondeo. It had smooth-revving engines, a total novelty for a Ford. It had clean, crisp steering, high precision handling and a finely judged ride. It was comfortable, its interior was intelligently planned, it was decently equipped and carried off multiple group test victories that often slayed a BMW.
The Mondeo didn’t sell like the Cortina did in Britain, but it sold vastly better in Europe. In the US, however, the Ford Contour and plusher Mercury Mystique reworks struggled, the cars too expensive for their size in this XXL market. In America, Ford’s car for the world strategy came undone.
That wasn’t enough to deter it from replacing the first Mondeo with a second that was even better. More confidently styled, more polished and more complete, it was far better value than a BMW or an Audi and almost as well finished. But Mondeo man, the shorthand political summation of a middle Englander, looked through this telescope from the other end. He could buy a sparsely equipped BMW for the price of a mid-range Mondeo, a slam-dunk in the driveway pay-grade parade.
Ford was not the only mainstream manufacturer losing this comparison to the shinier German brands, this ever- quickening decline of the so-called D-segment battalion of Mondeo, Vectra, Passat, Renault Laguna and Peugeot 406 dubbed “the flight to premium”.
Over the last 15 years there have been more mass flights, to crossovers and SUVs. The Nissan Qashqai, the Range Rover Evoque, the small German SUVs, the Korean crossovers – all have taken big bites out of the Mondeo’s market. Ford tripped up, too, by making the last Mondeo too big, for Europe at least, its North American equivalent – the Fusion - scaled to better suit the Interstate. Industrial troubles delayed the last Mondeo’s launch, too, further weakening its prospects.
So a golden comet fired in 1962 will extinguish after a 60-year flight, the Mondeo going off sale in 2022. It’s sad, but the market has changed, and Ford is changing with it. Still, what a run.
*READ MORE*
*Ford Mondeo to be discontinued in March 2022 after 29 years *
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*New Ford Mondeo to launch in 2021, official document reveals*