Mondeo Replacements

W

hen the time came to change the Mondeo, my initial thoughts were something like, “great, lets get another Mondeo diesel.” However, that would have defeated the point of changing the car - and besides, we hadn’t yet worn out the current Mondeo TD!

Our reasons for changing the Mondeo were reasonably clear cut. We had moved from Norwich to York, and our annual mileage had halved. Also, York is not a friendly place to run a car. They shut off large parts of the city between 08:00 and 18:00 hours, and it’s also busy. Very busy in the summer, merely busy in the winter. For our driving during the week, we rarely go above 40 mph.

Fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with the Mondeo. Diesels are very efficient when used for short runs compared to petrol cars (not requiring the an enriched fuel:air ratio to run properly), and the Mondeo had power steering. She had covered over 107,000 miles, but was running very well and had no mechanical ailments or bodywork defects. To be honest, changing the car was a luxury that we didn’t have to go through!

But another long, hot summer spent slowly baking in the Mondeo was enough to convince me that I really wanted something with air conditioning. After some investigation into the cost of getting air conditioning fitted to the Mondeo (around £1,200), and then looking at other cars that already had it fitted, my wife and I sat down and drew up a shortlist of what we wanted from a car.

Appearance

My wife had to like the looks! Fortunately (for me at least!) that ruled out most of the Japanese “telephone-box-on-wheels” affairs, but she could be “persuaded” otherwise. The first time she put eyes on a Ka, she commented that it was an awful shape. Now she loves it! /sigh/ women, eh?

Performance

We had no pressing requirements: high performance isn’t a priority for us. All modern cars these can cruise at 70 mph on the motorway, but some of the city cars we were looking at were much noisier than others. We wanted something that was easy to drive in the city (the Mondeo TD’s weakness is a tardy turbocharger response at low speeds, which makes some city driving difficult to master). Outright acceleration isn’t a priority – it’s addictive, but for the wrong reasons.

Handling & Ride

No specific requirements other than we didn’t want something too stiff, but I would have preferred something with accomplished handling for the twistier stuff that I knew we’d have to drive through.

Running Costs

To include the initial cost (since this would determine the interest cost on any loan), depreciation, insurance, service and maintenance, and (of course) fuel economy.

Equipment

It must have air conditioning and ABS. Other items we favoured included a leather interior, automatic transmission, electric windows and central locking.

Space

We needed two seats and enough boot space to carry weekend luggage. More seats and a chunky boot were not important.

Shortlist

Using the above criteria, I went through the Datasheet and What Car? with my wife, picking out the acceptable cars.

Out shortlist consisted of the MCC Smart Coupe, the Ka, the Fiat Siecento, the Seat Arosa, the Nissan Micra and the Peugeot 206.

The Test Drives

To be fair, all were acceptable as an overall package. The weakest of the bunch was the Seat Arosa, since it felt floppy and soggy in the twisty stuff, was small inside, and just short of being “royal butt ugly.”

The strongest to drive was the Ka, followed by the Smart (mainly because of the Smart’s cunning semi-automatic transmission).

However, in terms of running costs and equipment, the Smart was the cheapest, so that was our preferred choice. Yeah, we would have gotten a Smart . . . but for the fact that there was a four month waiting list for a right hand drive model, and we wanted to change it then and there.

So the Ka moved up to the first position. And that was that!