End of the road for the Ford Mondeo?
USUALLY spotted washing the car on the drive on a Saturday afternoon, he was once the epitome of Middle England.
But the future of ‘Mondeo Man’ is in doubt – as Ford is said to be planning to ditch the increasingly unfashionable car.
The struggling US manufacturer is set to axe thousands of jobs and scrap models in an attempt to turn around its business in Europe. The last Mondeo is expected to roll off the production line by 2020, it was reported yesterday.
Nearly 130,000 were sold in Britain in its first full year of production, following its launch in 1993. The large family car won a string of awards, and came to represent the aspirational, home- owning middle classes.
However last year only 55,800 were sold across the whole of Europe.
Ford chief executive Jim Hackett has announced a £9billion restructuring of the European business. Steven Armstrong, the company’s president in the region, said: ‘We are focused on aggressively attacking costs [and] implementing efficiencies to lower product and material cost.’
Analysts at Morgan Stanley have predicted this will mean losing 24,000 staff – or 12 per cent of its global workforce – fuelling fears for the future of its engine plants in Bridgend and Dagenham. The company employs around 12,000 workers in the UK.
Ford is also thought to be preparing to close some its dealerships – it owns 41 and has 463 franchised outlets in this country.
Mondeos sold in Europe are currently built in Valencia, Spain, and the manufacturer has not built cars in Britain since 2002.
Other models at risk are the Galaxy and S-Max people carriers, according to The Sunday Times.
The term ‘Mondeo Man’ is said to have been popularised when Tony Blair spotted a man polishing his car in the run-up to the 1997 general election. The young Labour leader decided this was exactly the kind of thirty- something middle-income homeowner his party needed to win over.
However the rise of cheap car finance has meant the same aspirational households who once bought a Mondeo can now upgrade to a BMW or Mercedes.
Although the Ford Fiesta and the Focus are the first and fourth best- selling cars in Britain, the company has been hit by the decline in diesel sales, uncertainty over Brexit and the failure to cash in on the popularity of SUVs.