Here's another sedan pretending it is a coupe – the latest Ford Mondeo. The fastback may deceive from a distance, but not for long. The car is too tall, long and has too much overhang to make it look like a coupe. Still, it is a good looking car, but you get the feeling that the Ford stylists pulled every trick out of the bag to make the Mondeo look different.
Inside you are greeted with a steering wheel with lots of controls on it, with a polished aluminum panel for most of them. Then you have this weird new instrument panel, with the semi-circular speed and rev-counter tucked away to the sides to leave space for a large display which most of the time tells you nothing.
Instrument display for the future, not now
What's the point? In due course, the complete instrument panel will be one screen able to display various sorts of information, but for the moment when you are driving – which is when it counts – you just look at a menu, and if you have the lights on you have a picture of the car with the light beams shown.
Again, what's the point? It would be nice if the speedo and rev-counter were in the middle and this stuff shoved out to the side – possibly with a digital speedo readout below the rev-counter.
But, this is a big-selling sedan, not a low-volume sports car so theses things are not considered important. You get the new keyless entry and push button to start and stop the engine, and the minor controls are fine, but the air-conditioning seems to have a mind of its own, too – and not the brightest one.
Once you press the start button, the 2.5 liter turbo engine - the same as the hotter Focus ST – comes to life, but is very quiet, as refinement is the thing here.
5-cylinder turbo a joy
In fact, the engine is one of the joys of the car. This Volvo five-cylinder mill replaces Ford's 3.0 liter V-6, which had the same output, but lacked the urgent response of the turbo. This five-cylinder engine is incredibly smooth, and can tootle along at little over 1,000 rpm in top.
You soon discover that the six-speed gearbox is very slick, and beats many a box found in sporty coupes for ease and speed of shifting. So, once you have covered a few miles, pushing back into the seat and start putting your foot down, you realise that the power train of the Mondeo 2.5T is a bit of an eye-opener.
It just does the job very well, keeping the speed where you want it, and getting back to it very quickly after a corner or a hold-up. This box has quite tall gearing, giving for about 65 mph in second and about 95 mph in third, so these are the gears you use for overtaking and accelerating out of corners.
Fifth gear redundant most of the time
So why does this car have a six-speed box? Fashion. The fact is that with the modern speed limits that are almost everywhere you always need to shift down to third to get anywhere fast, so fifth is certainly unnecessary.
Winding the engine upon motorways, you settle back into the comfortable seat which later proved to have more lateral support than some more illustrious metal. The cushion is grippy cloth, and the rest is trimmed in leather, which is a good approach.
Poor ride spoils long distance cruising performance
The acceleration is very lively for such a large and heavy car for the size of engine, so that you get up to speed – to a higher cruising speed than you expected – very quickly. It is also a very quiet high-speed cruiser, but fails the test of competing with more expensive cars, including some sporty ones in the poor ride.
In truth, the ride is about as bad as I have come across lately. To start with, the 235/40ZR 18 Continental tires are noisy, and at low speeds a lot of shocks and bumps come through the suspension into the body. And this despite the fact that the rear sub-frame is mounted on rubber. Surprising, this.
Over a short and undulating test route, though the car went very well, suffering no crash-through, and hanging on through the bends well, cornering very smoothly. This particular road has a very smooth surface.
Later, on a longer test run, I found that the car could cruise very quickly and quietly, and handled the bends of the twisty roads with aplomb. Despite the height, roll was limited, and the car could be placed easily where you wanted. Definitely good.
Over these roads, some of which have average road surfaces, with their fair share of bumps, the car was continually shaking me about, suggesting that the sports suspension was too stiff or that more wheel travel was needed to soak up the bumps while keeping the car on line.
Nevertheless, the Ford Mondeo 2.5T covered the ground very quickly, and I rate it quite highly in this respect. Of course, if you press very hard in slower bends you are rewarded by strong understeer, the inevitable result of front-wheel drive and a heavy power train.
Is the new car an advance on the old one? In terms of space, refinement and handling no doubt it is, but it is spoiled by the poor ride. Also, this progress has been bought at the cost of extra weight and size at a time when the world needs more from less.
