Time, I’ve decided, is a right bastard. Ten minutes ago, in 2004, I graduated University. The Chris Bangle era of BMW was getting into full swing; Rovers were still trundling out of Longbridge and Mercedes-Benz found a new niche for the banana-shaped car with the CLS. Put briefly, a terrifying number of things have happened in a very short period of time. This point rather erupted in my cerebral cortex when it occurred to me that the Ford Mondeo has now been with us for twenty-two years.
I vividly remember the explosive fanfare which accompanied the Mondeo when it arrived back in ’93. It’s difficult to comprehend just how much impact it had back then, and even harder to assimilate the media hoop-la that surrounded it. Sadly, today we see it as Just A Mondeo, and that’s just a tiny bit unfair.
So let’s start what promises to be a thoroughly edifying series in which we celebrate those cars which were celebrated as phenomenons when they were first released, only to later be rendered disposable by a combination of ubiquity and indifference. Mondeo, take a bow.


“Beauty with inner strength”
This was the strapline found on Mondeo marketing for the first couple of years, or until Ford realised that the one thing that didn’t particularly move people about the Mondeo was its styling. “Professional belly-achers are so distressed at there being nothing much to criticise they’ve been reduced to calling the styling “too Japanese”” was Autocar’s take on things, and they had a point. Yes, the Mondeo was anodyne, but was such a resounding quantum leap forward from the Sierra that people questioned whether Ford’s research team had access to alien technololgy.
Fully independent “quadralink” rear suspension, incorporating passive rear steering, was eons forward of the semi-trailing arms of the past. The shift to front-wheel-drive may have upset traditionalists and those who looked forward to a Sierra Cosworth follow-up, but the ride and handling of the new car was worshipped like a new, metal messiah. Adapting damping could be had on certain models, too, though it was hardly necessary.

Safety was a massive selling point on the new car and this was never really an area in which Ford had ever excelled in. But the new car had it designed-in. There was a safety-cell and impact beams not just in the doors but also below the windscreen, which contributed towards a bodyshell so rigid that the Mondeo has actually been banned at most Banger-racing circuits for being too cheaty. Inner strength, indeed.
Being tough enough to withstand impacts is great, but no good at all if your occupants are reduced to meat paste, so bundles of passive safety goodies were included. Mondeo was the first European car to have a drivers airbag plus front seatbelt grabbers and pretensioners on every model, as well as anti-submarine seats.

New twin-cam, multi-valve engines, too, replaced the old 8-valve CVH and I-4 post-pinto units, and a few years after launch came the Porsche-assisted  Duratec V6, all creamy power and sonorous voice (if not enormous amounts of torque), giving the car the motivational credentials to contest for sales from the BMW 320i. In comparative reviews of the day the V6 Mondeo out-pointed German rivals in a number of compelling ways, and then delivered a knockout punch in value for money.

Yes indeed. For a few years “Ford’s new family car hero barely puts a foot wrong” was the one-line review in the back of Autocar. Strong rivals like the Nissan Primera were forced out of the limelight and never really caught up. Vauxhall’s ’95 Vectra was soundly whupped by the Mondeo at their first meeting. Of course, something must have been lost in translation when the Mondeo’s world-car cousin the Contour started squirting out of the Kansas City plant, never receiving quite such a rapturous reception. Maybe it’s was because the medium-large car sector in which it fought so hard in Europe wasn’t even a thing in America. Contour was hardly bigger than an Escort, and smaller than the Tempo it kind of replaced, so I can understand confusion as to what the Contour was supposed to be all about.
Anyway, we loved it over here.
“For build, finish, standard of interior appointment and design, zestful performance and terrific chassis, there’s nothing to touch the Mondeo for the money”

Yet, today, scenes like the above are commonplace. Surviving MK1 Mondeos in daily service are dwindling at an alarming rate. They’ve ended up in the “cheapest possible transportation” sector and are probably being driven by people who have absolutely no idea of their capabilities. Ubiquity has lead to the syndrome of “it’s just a Mondeo”.
Nobody, it seems, wants to save these things from disappearing altogether.
(Scrapyard images from a guy on Flickr called “Andrew”. Thanks! All other images from original manufacturer press material)