warren t claim

Are you saying that an Argenta or Croma is a better can than a Granada?

We need to remember that the Mondeo was introduced halfway through the K plate year.

Although over the years my fleet has included Aspen, LX, GLX, Si and Ghia models there are a few gaps that are triggering off my OCD. The fact that I've never owned a V6 isn't really that surprising due to my use case. After all, no sane driver would ever consider renting a V6 from me to do 50,000 mostly urban miles a year. I never owned a Ghia X TD either. There's a logical reason for this though. If I wanted a Mondeo with leather seats I'd have just bought a set of hide seats from a salvage yard and fitted them to a lower spec car. Other than the leather trim the only bonus of having a Ghia X is having both sunroof and aircon as the Ghia X in TD spec didn't come with cruise control. The only saloons I owned were a couple of Aspens and one solitary GLX TD. The biggest gap in my Mk1/2 CV is the fact that I've never owned, hired or rented out an estate. There's no logical reason for this as estate cars rent out easily. I've got nothing against estates. After all, I've had about half a dozen Mk4 estates, it's just that no estate appeared when I was Mondeo shopping.

A light metallic blue Zetec with the Escort GTI alloy wheels was on my want list to get plated and keep for myself. The problem was at the time they were the most sought-after model. IIRC, the Zetec specific grille cost something like £180 compared to £35 for the normal grille.

That looks saveable.

There may be a logical reason for this low mileage. The original owner may have had a company policy for vehicles that extended to on site vehicles that insisted on diesel, estate, ABS, Ford etc. I heard of a similar policy insisted on by a NHS trust that rented a Megane Scenic for six months and returned it with less than 50 miles on the clock.

I very much doubt that either of those Aspen diesels were mine The Verona TD surprises me because I didn't think that they were sold in TD variant. I'm sure that if they were I'd either have seen one advertised, bid on one at a salvage auction or known another driver who had one.

And Bullitt is a slow and boring film other than the chase scene.

@eddyramrod you need this in your life!

It's funny you should mention that. I've had colour grilled LXs but never any of them were Aspen spec cars. All my Mk2 Aspens were saloons and I'm certain that the newest was an S reg. Come to think of it, they were all diesels as well.

There's got to be an interesting story behind this. https://www.gumtree.com/p/ford/2000-ford-mondeo-1.8-lx-td-5dr-11500-miles-estate-diesel-mondeo-classic-with/1473877788

I'd forgotten how colour-coordinated the Mk1 was compared to the Mk2. That pic really does illustrate the superior quality of seat fabric the Mk1 had compared to its successor. The coin holder was useful in these. Whenever I was fobbed off with some foreign coins I'd ram them into the coin holder and see how low it took before an opportunistic light fingered punter stole them. Another Warren peculiarity was that I always made sure that I kept a half decent pen in the dedicated pen holder. No half chewed biro for me. Looking at that hardcore, held open, continental strength interior pic reminds me that if you drop anything like money between the front seat and centre console you should consider it lost forever. You will never see it again regardless of how determined you are. Using that space to slide your A to Z in helped stuff from dropping in there though.

@Minimad5 from where our former unit was.

MG6 is due its six monthly inspection and will need quite a few jobs sorting. I have this as a loan(?) car for a week or so. 265,000 miles and judging by the Cab Direct number plates, been working as a taxi all of its life. I suppose I should let you all know what my first impressions are. I should start by saying that my opinion so far is based on about thirty miles of gentle shuttling about on my Tradex policy. No combat miles as yet until I can swap my hire and reward insurance over tomorrow morning. I'll start by saying that the seating position is VERY low. I'm sure that there must be the facility to raise the driver's seat but as yet I can't find it. This can be an issue as because I have long legs and therefore in Focus sized cars I like to raise my seat to allow a little more rear legroom. The seat also seems to lack any lumbar support either which means that I've had to position the backrest a little more upright than I'd like. It's not as fast as the MG but has plenty enough power for the job, whilst driving unladen I'm changing up the box at the same speed as in the MG. I've yet to try it with a full compliment of people and luggage. I can't yet gather any MPG figures as it came with a quarter of a tank. The power steering has three assistance levels. 1. Very light. 2. Mk2 Punto with the "girly button" pressed. 3. 1977 XJ6. The turning circle is a hell of a lot better than the MG6. In fact, the MG needs Costa Concordia levels of space to spin around so that's no surprise. Ride quality is leagues ahead of the MG. The Kia rides as well as a modern Focus which is in stark contrast to the MG which absorbs bumps in a way that has me feeling nostalgic for my old XR3is. Internal storage is miles better than the MG. Instead of having one flimsy pop out cupholder that eats into the leg room of a front seat punter the Kia has two sensible centrally mounted holders to not just house a coffee, but also another to accommodate a packet of Hob Nobs to dunk into the aforementioned hot beverage. The Kia also has storage under the armrest that's at least triple the size of that of the MG. It also has a large central cubby, a feature absent on the MG6. The Kia lacks the automatic lights and wipers of the MG6. The leather seat trim of the MG6 is more "punter proof" than the cloth seats of the Kia. The Kia has a DAB radio. The MG6 has an AM/FM unit that doesn't work anyway. This isn't as bad as it sounds as I used a Bluetooth speaker to stream audio because the MGs Bluetooth isn't A2DP and only works for phone calls, not audio streaming. I've yet to check if the Kia is A2DP. The MG has built in sat nav, a feature missing on the Kia. As the MG navigation unit is so awkward to input a destination into as you can't search by postcode, this isn't too much of a loss. Anyway, I'm a taxi driver who should know where he's going anyway! The only useful feature of the MG sat nav was the display automatically told me what road I was currently on. So I suppose it's a case of swings and roundabouts. The next few days will decide which car makes the better taxi.

I often wonder how different my life would have turned out if I'd have got badged at 21.