Any other business…

Ford has discontinued the Mondeo. It is indicative of the aspirations of the working man (or woman) that the market deserted the car long before the car left the market.

Before Mondeo we had Sierra, the radically sleek body of which sat atop underpinnings little different from the Cortina’s. And I was brought up in Cortinaland: a late-70s sea of identikit houses, a driveway alongside each. You could identify the social status of each occupant by the trim level (a Ford invention) indicated on the boot-lid: 1.6L for up-andcoming rep, junior manager’s GL, a 2.0 Ghia beyond that.

Henry Ford put the world on wheels with the Model T back in 1908. The Cortina arrived in 1962, selling visual style over sophisticated tech, and knocking BMC’s 1100 off the top UK sales spot. Back then, Ford of Europe had the Taunus, against which the Cortina competed. Things began to unify with the Cortina MkIV and the Taunus TC2. Then came Sierra: more Cologne than Dagenham.

That was reflected in 1993’s sharp-handling Mondeo: named from the Latin mundus, it was a world car, contrarily known in the US as the Contour or Mercury Mystique. But Ford suffered in the 2008 financial crisis, offloaded its prestige brands and concentrated its large car expertise in the US. So the fourth and final Mondeo was American, its European launch delayed, and it lost its footing in the UK. Those reps had been handed Audis, the trad saloon/estate bodywork lacked appeal in an SUV world, and thus we say farewell to it. Mondeo-man had already waved goodbye.