Ford Mondeo Estate (07 on) - Review

Ford Mondeo Estate Comfort levels are excellent. The car has grown in both width and length and as a result there's lots of room for two in the back. Legroom is impressive and the middle seat is adequate for short trips. The seats are supportive and a good shape, although the sloping shape of the roof restricts headroom, however on the move – and especially on the motorway – it’s very quiet. Wind and road noise are well suppressed and engine noise is only noticeable under hard acceleration. It means that the Mondeo is well equipped for long distance driving.

The Mondeo estate's boot space is bigger than in the previous version of the car, with a minimum of 542 litres up to the window level. With the rear seats folded there is a huge 1733 litres of space available up to roof height. This isn't quite as much as the Vauxhall Vectra estate, but it's still cavernous while a huge square opening and the absence of a boot lip makes it easy to load large or heavy objects. A load protection net is an optional extra, as is a sliding loading floor, but both are well worth the extra if you frequently use the boot space. The most ingenious feature is one of the simplest - the fuel filler. Not only does the Mondeo do away with a conventional cap (it’s fixed permanently to the flap, which means you don’t get petrol or diesel on your hands), but it’s impossible to fill it with the wrong fuel – it will only allow the right nozzle into the fuel pipe, so you won’t become one of the 250,000 people who each year mis-fuel their car.

The interior looks good and is easy to use. Some of the functions - especially on the top models - are controlled by buttons on the steering wheel and you scroll through menus in the same way you would on a mobile phone. Ford calls this the HMI system - or Human Machine Interface and it's fairly intuitive to use. The seat adjusts every which way, so it's easy to get a good, supportive driving positing while forward visibility is good. On the 2010 refesh, the Mondeo has had a little nip/tuck on the interior. The most striking design tweak is that the central console is now one piece, the plastics feel softer and are of a higher quality.