MONDEO 4X4
All you need to know about the now superrare, four-wheel drive Mk1 Mondeo.
The rarest of Ford’s all-drive line-up.
“FOUR -WHEEL- DRIVE MONDEOS WERE USED TO BLAST ACROSS SIBERIA IN 1993”
We bet you’d forgotten that there ever was a four-wheel drive Mondeo? But if you dig hard enough, you will find mention of 4x4 Mondeos built between 1993 and 1996. Not many of them, though, and as far as we can see, they were never separately price-listed in the UK.
Ford dabbled a lot with four-wheel-drive in the 1980s and 1990s, but only got serious about building conventional conversions for Sierras, Escort RS Cosworths and Scorpios.
Grafting four-wheel drive into cars, which normally had transverse engines and front-wheel drive was a lot more difficult, and almost impossible, it seems, to bring in at the right sort of price. The system, which evolved over the years, was certainly ultra-rare in the Mondeos, and seems only to have been available with the 136 bhp 2-litre four-cylinder Zetec petrol engine, hidden away under Si, Ghia and Ghia X trim packs. The rugged new MTX75 five-speed gearbox was essential to the kit (no automatics), but ‘growing’ four-wheel drive out of that meant fitting an
all-new floorpan (to clear the rear propshaft), adding a rear diff close to the rear seat cushions, and using a more sophisticated rear suspension. It worked well, but there are still Ford cost accountants who shudder if you mention the ‘profitability hit’ which followed the addition of all this to the basic design.
Not many people remember the ambitious trans-Siberian expedition of 1993-1994 in which four-wheel drive Mondeos and Mavericks were used to try and blast their way eastwards across the vast continent to the Bering Sea. After that they would take a ferry to Alaska, and complete the journey across Canada and the USA to New York (if you can find it, a BBC documentary made about the journey is well worth watching).
Although this particular model of Mondeo was a commercial failure, the four-wheel drive system was not. Not only did it find a home in the rare Escort RS2000 of the same period, but a modernised derivative of it was also used under the V6-engined Jaguar X-Types of the early 2000s.