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| Road Test Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi Titanium Estate Automatic |
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Nice But Pricey
The bald figures demonstrate that choosing this model over its manual-transmission equivalent makes very little financial sense, and is worth considering only if you really want an automatic. To start with, there's a price premium of £1100. Straightline performance suffers, partly because that's what happens with conventional automatics and partly because Ford detunes the two-litre turbo diesel engine by about 10bhp before mating it to the automatic gearbox. Fuel economy suffers too. The official combined figure is 39.8mpg (which happens to be exactly what I managed during this test, according to the trip computer), and that's about 9mpg worse than the manual. So you'll pay more for fuel, and you'll also have to cough up more money in tax; the automatic produces 189g/km of CO2 emissions, which puts it two VED bands - equivalent to £65 per year - above the manual. That pretty much wraps things up, then. Or at least it would if the diesel automatic didn't have enough charms of its own. The current Mondeo is very much larger than any other car to bear the name, and whereas an early 1990s model (developed, as Ford lost no opportunity to point out at the time, with the assistance of triple F1 World Champion Sir Jackie Stewart) was surprisingly nimble for a mid-sized repmobile, today's version is much happier on straight and well-surfaced roads. The extra driving precision you can achieve with the manual therefore doesn't amount to much, whereas the reduced activity of your left arm and leg is a far greater aid to relaxation than it was the past. I've driven several of the new Mondeos, all so far with manual transmission, and frankly the act of changing gear in them can be a bit laborious. Leaving the box to its own devices was something I was quite happy to do.
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