02 Sep 08
And, I'm sorry to say, this is isn't the only element of the Ford Mondeo Estate's on-board systems with which we're less than impressed.
The air-conditioning is incredibly intrusive when running on full Auto: even when inside and outside temperatures match, the fan blasts away at full pelt as if still trying to cool a car recently re-entered after a day on the beach. If you want an agreeable trickle that leaves your barnet more or less as you intended, there's nothing for it but to slow the fan manually. This, surely, can't be right.
The satellite navigation system is also prone to minor, inexplicable hissy fits. The other day, it simply refused to respond to screen proddings at all until I'd stopped the car and re-booted everything. This, given a missus who still goes everywhere via Crystal Palace (not good if you live in Oxfordshire) unless she has assistance from the machinery, could have been a disaster. Given that the same system recently suggested a four-and-a-half-hour route to tackle the two-hour journey back from her mum's, we still don't trust it much.
Then, of course, the driver's seat partially collapsed, leaving me rocking to and fro like a Grand National jockey every time I changed gear. The local dealer said he couldn't do anything for at least a fortnight so, in the end, Ford took it away and fixed it themselves. Since then, however, I've become convinced that the left hand side of the seat back is set further back than the right, leaving me pointing more towards the centre console that the steering wheel. Let's see if a long haul changes this impression.
