By RoadworkUK
Depreciation is a savage phenomenon. The way some cars lose value after first leaving the showroom often takes the form of a really violent looking curve when charted. In a lot of cases it really doesn’t take very long at all before a car has lost almost all of the multiple thousands that were spent on it in the first place.
But what happens next? Once a car has lost all its value (which is inextricably linked with it its desirability), it is still just as much of a car as it ever was before. It just takes somebody to see beyond such fickle mistresses as age and image and take it on as bargain transportation. If you do things right you need never pay more than scrap value for a car ever again, and there’s an awful lot of cut-price tin out there to choose from.
After it was unanimously decided that a 1995 Citroen Xantia was roundly deserving of our £200 maximum purchase, we’re heading £10 downmarket for a much newer car in the shape of a 2001 Mondeo.
Ah, the Mundano. Unjustly mocked throughout its 23 year existence, not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it but because it represents a default choice or a certain lack of imagination on the part of the buyer. We all love to back the underdog, and Mondeo is very definitely the Overdog. It’s a bit like my eternal hatred of the band U2 (who have churned out dozens of global hits over the last three decades, without once being interesting), but the simple fact of the matter is that Mondeo deserves its overwhelming grip on our nations roads, and the Mark 3 was an extremely capable all-round everyday transport solution.
This one is a mere 15 years old yet has managed to descend to near unsaleability. Indeed, the scrapyards are beginning to swell with Mondeos dumped thanks to indifference rather than illness. An old Mondeo is not a particularly marketable commodity. Hence “190 quid takes it away, mate”.
“2001 Saloon 140,000 miles Manual 2.0L Petrol++ 4 MONTHS MOT ++ SOME HISTORY ++, Air-Conditioning, Alarm, In Car Entertainment (Radio/CD). 5 seats, GREEN, LOOKS AND DRIVES WELL FOR AGE, +, £190 p/x considered”
I love that phrase “drives well for age”. What the hell does that mean? Would a ’68 Daytona drive “really, really well for age”? In my opinion a 2005 Kia Rio drives quite badly for its age. IT MEANS NOTHING.
Who knows what’s wrong with it. It’s a manual, so unless the clutch is hanging out you should be OK, and it’s a petrol so there are no scary turbocharger issues to fear. It has SOME HISTORY, though we don’t know whether that’s maintenance related or concerns the car appearing in an episode of Eastenders or that Former MP Tony Benn once leant against it in a car park in Bristol.
We know that it has air conditioning and a CD player and is legally vouched as being safe for the road for another four months. And the strangely photoshopped-into-a-white-room images tell us that yes, it’s a little scruffy, but it has at least three alloy wheels.
What more could you want?
I know it ain’t no Xantia, but bear in mind last week’s car was ten pounds more expensive. If you don’t have that kind of money, but could stretch to £190, What do you think about putting it on a Mondeo?
(I’m proud to say that none of these images are mine. See them here in the original listing on Autotrader.co.uk)
Jeff Glucker 
Kamil Kaluski
The styling of these really hasn’t aged well, has it? It just looks like a big-ass Focus. Of course it would help if they washed it, and replaced that wheel.
On second thought, a new wheel is probably worth more than the car.
I’d put money on the other alloy being in the boot with a deflated tire on it.
A deflated ego, from being on this pile. Granted, I hope to find something like this, but automatic, when we go there in a few years.
It’s slightly bigger sibling the Ford 500 (later renamed Taurus just because) looks similarly … bland. The difference being the 500 had a Volvo engineered chassis with an electro-hydraulic Haldex all-wheel drive option that would make it a good winter beater. Did these two cars occupy the same niche in the Ford food chain?
This is Ford Europe’s biggest car. A partial rebody of this model became the current model Mondeo and the US market current model Fusion. i.e. The current Fusion and Mondeo are the same car, based on this one. And the 5 X 108 PCD on the wheels might imply that there’s still Volvo bits in there. Not that that’s important as Ford’s chassis engineers in Europe have a very good reputation, much better than that of Volvo. These are some of the best driving cars on real roads ever built, miles better than anything VW/Audi or the French do still and better than BMW seem to be able to manage in their FWD models.
But it’s got a non-sporting Ford badge, so it’s ‘worth’ nothing.
That’s the thing, though – even though I know that there’s a decent car under there, this particular generation of it was so middle-of-the-road that I just can’t muster the interest. If I were kicking both cars’ tyres on the same day, I’d end up with the Xantia at the end of it.
However… If I were looking at it from the purely rational standpoint of, “this is transportation that I can use for a few months and be almost guaranteed that when I’m done with it I can sell it on for what I paid for it,” the Mondeo would be the safer bet of the two.
This is such a well-done writeup, there’s really nothing to add. Looks like another worthy deal.
“DON”T LOCK” – what, did they lose the keys?
The older I get, the more I hope to be described as “drives well for age”.
Ford Mondeo (especially Station Wagon) is a good and reliable daily driver.
Over here in Germany all american (and japanese!) carmakers have gone down the drain.
Except Ford. Because of Mondeo/Focus. You can buy those Fords blindfolded.
This would be a perfect winter car, except that here it would cost at least $2000 because so few of them would have survived the accumulation of the aforementioned winters, plus Manitoba warzones, erm, roads.
Looks like a fine value, if not particularly interesting. But there sure are a lot of worse looking, worse performing, and less reliable cars for an equal or higher price.
Are used cars and older cars less desirable in the British market than in, say, the U.S. because of MOT inspections, or are there more/other reasons for such cheap 15-20 year old cars in Britain?
Well, our MOT is nowhere near as punishing as that of certain other nations, though it still gives folk The Fear. I’m afraid to say that the depressed values of plentiful non-aspirational cars like these are symptomatic of the status-obsessed nature of the British public.
I can see no other logical explanation.
The problem with this car, at least for myself, is that it’s so….neutral. I don’t really like it nor do I hate it. But, for less than $270 U.S. dollars, I would probably buy it, spend a day wondering why I did, then just give it to my brother or something.
in U2’s defense, War is a good album. not particularly interesting perhaps, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because U2 is boring or because we all know by now what U2 sounds like.
Yup. The Mondeo of the airwaves.
Except that the Mondeo, lacking Bono, has the benefit of not stating an opinion on something every time someone is looking at it.
indeed
I knew once Mondeo just like above, first year (00′; 01′?) car, which got its doors(!) changed under warranty as rust monster reared its ugly head in just couple of months after it left the dealership. I think they changed something at plant in Belgium where these came from after the outcry.
Can’t really go too far wrong as daily fodder, gets less quirky points than the Xanta, but Ford seem to have a great knack of understanding what people actually want/need in a daily driver. Little things like a heated windscreen as standard on most cars. 2.0 Duratec would be common kit car donor fodder when you’re done too…
Knock that 1 off of the front of the price and it’d be better than walking. If it was raining.
Not a bad car, but this sums it up nicely: “not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it but because it
represents a default choice or a certain lack of imagination on the part
of the buyer.”
On the plus side, knowing that the busses are likely still running while the search for an alternative is in progress, you’re at not completely stuck while looking for something more interesting.
Not a bad deal at all (UK used car prices are insane), but I’d much rather own the Xantia.
Only 140000miles?
So it’s got another 200,000miles of use in it,at least; has a great handling/ride blend, is roomy and you can get parts anywhere. Buy it and run it for ten years and I’ll bet it’ll be worth more than you’ve paid for it. A proper low cost way to go motoring for a long time.
I’d do it, but most people won’t because somehow they’re afraid of what other people think, which I find odd.
Who cares?
Sensible people don’t. What’s wrong with looking less rich while not losing money?
If I needed a simple me-carrier for the daily commute (and I kinda do), this really wouldn’t be a wrong choice. Like you, I don’t care much what others think, especially when I’m making the 10-minute run to work at 5:00 in the morning.
it would be a fun car just to screw around with till it died or you crash it trying to drift it in a feild