Project Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi
PART ONE: Rob Hawkins breathes a sigh of relief as we finally manage to buy our next project vehicle in the nick of time.
How hard can it be to buy one of the UK’s most popular family saloons or hatchbacks? Having decided on a thirdgeneration Ford Mondeo (known to us in the UK as the Mk4) as CM’s next project vehicle, we didn’t anticipate the challenges ahead in buying one.
Browsing through online auction sales, there were plenty to choose from, but we were often outbid. For instance, editor Knowles gave up on a 2.2-litre diesel model that had a CAP Clean price of £2075, that ended at £2850 plus fees. He was cautious with a 2011 EcoBoost model that sold for just over £3k, and wondered what bidders were thinking when an early 2014 non-runner had a reserve price of £1000 plus fees.
Both of the last two examples were equipped with Ford’s PowerShift automatic gearbox, which was developed by Ford and Getrag, featuring wet clutches. It should be serviced every three years or 37,500 miles to help avoid contamination-induced failure, though the service kit (oil and filter) costs £100-£200 – we spoke to a gearbox specialist who fixes these on a regular basis and charges upwards of £3000 for drive-in, drive-out repairs. And when CM looked at the Mondeo in general over two years ago in the January 2021 issue, under Used Car Focus, Chris Randall mentioned similar costs, explaining that failure can be caused by contamination due to debris, whether that’s through a lack of servicing or the damper plate’s plastic inserts for its springs (within the dualclutch mechanism) exploding. Suffice to say that we wouldn’t have minded taking on a PowerShift gearbox repair, but only if such a car came up at the right price.
Fortunately, we remained calm and eventually found the 2010 hatchback pictured here, which is a Titanium X model and equipped with a six-speed manual gearbox. The engine is a 140bhp Duratorq (not to be confused with the lesser-powered 113bhp 2.0-litre), which costs £220 per year in road tax.
Editor Knowles won the bidding at £2000, which was £400 over its CAP Clean price, but for a car that originally cost nearly £27k when new, at almost 13 years old (registered on March 8th 2010), we bought it for less than 7.5% of its original value. Looking online at selling websites, we found plenty of cheaper examples, but usually with higher mileage (ours has covered 118k), bodywork damage or having been written-off and returned to the road.
