Our Fleet Test Drive: Ford Mondeo estate - 10th Report

Date: 20 November 2008   |   Author: Guy Bird

satnav

Having praised the simplicity of much of Ford's new Human Machine Interface (HMI) it's since decided to drive me mad by a small omission in its satnav software.

Our Mondeo is unable to take a full postcode - only the first half plus the first number of the second part can be input. Often this is enough, but other times - like when I tried to find an address in Mitcham - it isn't.

I had to resort to the long route - country/city/street/corner etc. And the trouble with Mitcham is that it straddles more than one area, some of it considered London borders, other parts Surrey, while the road I was after didn't come up under either straight away.

Furthermore, the address was off one of its key roads - London Road - which variously comes under Hackbridge, Mitcham, Carshalton etc - and which are all very close to each other.

To cap it all, when I went to input the street number I got the option of 80-132 and 138-240. I was after 133. Oh Lord!

So I rang Ford to see if there was another way. The answer: On '2008.5' model-year cars, entering a full postcode is possible, but for those before it's not. But there is a silver lining. Older Mondeos - like ours - can now have their software upgraded at Ford dealers.

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