While auto brands around the world are sharing the huge cake of the Chinese market, Ford can only watch pitifully.
An irrefutable fact is that sales of Ford and its joint venture in China, Changan Ford, have fallen considerably in recent years. Once upon a time, Changan Ford was a head car company with annual sales of one million vehicles, but now? It seems that half a million is a huge hurdle.
Brain drain, environmental changes, slow product introduction, three-cylinder machine introduction... For whatever reason, it seems impossible to reasonably explain the current dilemma of Changan Ford.
But one thing that can be confirmed is that Ford's product charm in the past two years (except for the F150 Raptor) has been greatly reduced, and it is no longer the brand with dynamic charm in our previous impression, there are many reasons for this, and the products that cannot impress consumers, even if your marketing is done well, in the current Chinese market, it is impossible to succeed.
The sharp edge introduced the previous year did not reproduce the glory of the Wing Tiger of that year, and the explorer failed to become a sales burden due to the price point, as for the Fox, it was affected by the three-cylinder engine, and it has been suppressed by the Japanese system (the good news is that Changan Ford is about to come out with a four-cylinder engine to replace the Fox), so the current Changan Ford is in urgent need of a "savior"-like model to save.
But the question is, will it be the new Mondeo?
Speaking of Mondeo, this car still has a very popular base in China, especially the second and third generations of domestic production in 2004 and the end of 2006, which really let Chinese consumers know the charm of the 007 car.
At that time, the Mondeo chassis was particularly outstanding, calm and solid, first-class cornering ability, I still remember the end of 2006 in Zhangjiajie test drive Mondeo - victory scene, the chassis of the car is a real pull bottom, the shape is also full of sports, but in terms of fuel consumption, it is not as good as the Japanese competitors, after all, the American cars of that era, whose fuel consumption is not low.
I've always felt that sportiness is the soul of Ford and Mondeo, because its chassis advantage is very obvious compared to the competition (this one also applies to Fox). And this time, the new Mondeo we saw at the Ford China Design Center seems to have picked up this killer tool again, which is good news. The scene is placed is a new Mondeo ST-Line model, belongs to the flagship model of the entire car series, so it can be seen that Changan Ford this time is very clear about the strengths of its own products, firmly take the personality and sports route, in terms of Changfu's current situation, I have to say that this is a bold and very confident decision, this is a good thing, with self-confidence, in order to face the strong enemy without fear.
The red-and-black body design is extremely eye-catching, coupled with the appearance of a four-door coupe, a blackened fast-back roof, and an octagonal grille, the first glance of the new Mondeo is eye-catching.
The size of this car is not small, the length of the car is close to five meters, nearly three meters (2945mm) of wheelbase, but the proportions are excellent, the hood is slender, the sharp A-pillar inclination, the short and powerful rear shoulder design, giving the whole vehicle a dynamic and coordinated golden ratio, so it looks, not bloated at all.
The front of the new Mondeo adopts a penetrating light strip + headlight integrated design, which is highly recognizable, and all the design elements of the front of the car are radiated around the grille, and the visual effect is very eye-catching.
The exterior of the ST-Line model adopts a larger area of black material, as well as the exclusive front and skirt encirclement, breathing kinetic scale grille, rotor aerodynamic wheels and other designs, as well as the ST-Line logo on the fenders and exclusive red brake calipers, as well as the unique flying wing design embedded in the rear of the car, which strengthens the exclusive dynamic characteristics of the ST-Line model.
In the bones, the new Mondeo is a "technology man", sharing the same new electronic and electrical platform with Ford pure electric models - Ford FNV intelligent interconnection network architecture.
Therefore, the interior style, design concept, locking opponents, and target customer groups of the new car are not small differences from traditional products, and to use a more visual word to describe, this is a smart car with a fuel-powered heart.
Since it is a smart car, the big screen must be there. The new Mondeo's 1.1-meter ultra-wide area giant screen is the same as EVOS's, integrating a 12.3-inch full-color digital LCD dashboard and a 27-inch large true 4K central control screen, a 27-inch central control screen supporting full and split screen free switching, multi-touch, and the car machine system is Ford's latest generation of SYNC +2.0 Zhixing interconnection.
Of course, another advantage of using the new electrical and electronic platform is that it has the ability to have a global OTA of the whole vehicle, and consumers can update the car machine system at any time without frequent trips to and from the 4S store, which can not only reflect the high-tech nature of the new Mondeo, but also show that Ford is seriously examining the Chinese market when creating this model.
In addition to the intelligence and technology we saw above, the new Mondeo also has certain advantages in terms of body size and power configuration.
From the parameter point of view, its length and wheelbase are the longest in the class, especially the rear space is extremely spacious, the rear seat backrest tilt angle is also very large, with good riding comfort.
In terms of power, this ST-Line model is equipped with a 2.0-liter turbocharged engine with a maximum horsepower output of 238 horses, and with an 8-speed automatic transmission, the time to accelerate from stationary to 100 kilometers is more than 6 seconds, and the performance is worth looking forward to.
Of course, I believe that the new Mondeo will definitely have a smaller displacement engine to choose from, and the specific configuration will not be known until it is officially launched.
In the current consumer car purchase most valued driving assistance function, the new generation of Mondeo equipped with Co-Pilot360 intelligent driving assistance system, it is said to be equipped with 23 sensor configurations, can achieve up to 18 intelligent driving assistance configurations, including Ford's world's first L2 + automatic driving function - Blue Cruise active driving assistance function, in the highway and urban expressway section of specific sections to achieve "quasi-automatic assisted driving", greatly alleviating the pressure of long-term driving, improve driving safety. In addition, the new generation of Mondeo is equipped with Ford's first mass-produced vehicle-to-road coordination system, which is based on cellular vehicle networking (C-V2X) technology, which connects vehicles to the urban intelligent transportation system, enhances the vehicle's perception of road infrastructure such as traffic lights, and makes driving more predictable.
On the occasion of the unveiling of the new generation of Mondeo ST-Line, Changan Ford also launched a car booking promotion at the same time, which can be described as sincere from the pre-sales and after-sales policies given.
But for Changfu, it has left the mainstream market for too long, to let consumers re-notice it, it takes a period of time and more eye-catching performance, the road ahead, is still full of unknowns, I hope that the new generation of Mondeo is ready.
Wonderful review
Haichuan Pinche has been stationed on the following platforms