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Our Fleet Test Drive: Ford Mondeo estate - 12th Report
Date: 30 January 2009 | Author: Hugh Hunston
Our heavily specified Mondeo estate, with everything from cooled leather seats to active cruise control, is a technological tour de force, although the everyday relevance and value of equipment can be highly subjective.
The standard bendy directional xenon headlights have, however, proved their worth recently when and they helped avert a domestic trauma by revealing the family cat in the final yards of a late night journey home.
Parking sensors are a boon, too, even if the Ford's front system over- or under-reacts and fails to register substantial speed humps.
Other tech proving its worth includes the service diagnostic system, which has recently flashed a service reminder up on the fascia panel as one year (rather than 12,500 miles) looms.
One thing we're not quite so keen on is the pretentiously named Human Machine Interface (how you monitor and manipulate the car's functions). Ergonomically it's not sufficiently intuitive, and having many of the controls on the steering wheel rather than below and behind it involves the distraction of fiddling with thumbs rather than naturally using fingers.
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