Price: £29,395
Top speed: 140mph
0-62mph: 8.3 seconds
MPG: 62.8
There was a time when Tour de France journalists sat on motorbikes to watch the race. Then we would sit for hours in restaurants chewing over the event while consuming the locality’s finest wines. Now we spend most of July sitting in a car watching France flash by, and the rest of the time watching the race on TV from plastic chairs.
Plenty of sitting down, in other words, and over 25 years I’ve always assumed that – let’s put this delicately – a certain amount of posterior discomfort was the price that had to be paid for the privilege of following La Grande Boucle.
This time, a week into the race, I realised that those familiar and unloved aches were missing, and the explanation was underneath and behind me.
The Vignale is what Ford terms a “new ownership experience”, available across several other models as well as the Mondeo. It comes with all sorts of bells and whistles, including its own website, where a glamorous-looking lady stands outside a plush hotel with her scarf wafting in the breeze.
The plan appears to be to take the Ford driving experience upmarket, although as a Mondeo Man of many years’ standing, I must say the experience in the Mondeo is not bad at all. It is not high on adrenaline or sophistication but it does what it is meant to do: it swallows a lot of kit and takes you from A to B comfortably and economically. At the top of the range, the Zetec package is already far from basic.
Still, the Vignale is more than just a marketing exercise. The customer service is much improved, and the Mondeo we took on the Tour went a long way further. The four-wheel-drive version had mountain handling which was utterly surefooted, particularly considering that this is not a compact vehicle, with nary a tyre squeal to delight the roadside fans, and ample zip. It simply devoured the Alps; the flipside however was that the fuel tank emptied with disconcerting speed, although an eco version is available.
The interior was a delight, and active noise control made this a totally silent trip. But the clincher was the seats. “Quilted leather with hexagonal design”, the blurb said. Most days in July, you can’t wait to get out of the Tour car. This year I was happy to stay put.
Martin Love is away
