Google Photos handily served me up an eight-year-old memory the other day. It was one of the photos I took of a car for Autotrader just before I sold it. Boy, did it bring back memories.
The car in question was a 2003 Ford Mondeo ST220. It was a car that I had loved from the moment I first saw it on the road. At that time, I was running around in one of a string of cars from our “We Have Kids” era. Gone were the 1980s hot hatchbacks of my youth to be replaced at that time, if I remember correctly, by a Citroen Xantia. It wasn’t a terrible car, but certainly not a great one.
I’d been thinking about something a bit more exciting but still practical. Remember the “we have kids” bit? The Mondeo ST24 and ST200 looked pretty handy, and prices were good. But then, soon after it was released, I saw an ST220 on the road and was smitten. The new, squarer Mondeo looked awesome in ST trim.
It was around three years before I took the plunge and, as always, spent much more than I should have done on the Silver Machine (yes, named after the Hawkwind song). I truly had become “Mondeo Man”.
The V6 Duratec engine was excellent. Happy and refined cruising around, but something magic happened at around 4000rpm.
FWD obviously wasn’t ideal, but the car made the most of it, and it worked well in most conditions. When I started thinking about it the other day, I realised that the Ford was my last manual and, until my recent Boxster S purchase, was my last normally-aspirated engine. It was also my first V.
Apart from one extended garage stay when Ford supplied the wrong replacement alternator and took five weeks to discover the mistake, it didn’t skip a beat. We were in the “we still have kids” era, and the Mondeo did excellent service on family holidays and latterly as a dad taxi on the nightclub run.
“Sideways through time
Silver Machine, Hawkwind
It’s an electric line
To your zodiac sign
I’ve got a silver machine”