Sophistication sells 

 

 

The main question was how more sophisticated did the Sierra for the nineties need to be ? After all heads were still rolling after Robert Lutz and Uwe Bahnsen’s  jelly mould. Did they play safe with the styling or the technology under the skin ? Or should the bar be raised, a world car and a world beater. Front wheel drive was chosen for the chassis, the bench mark to be set by a car available all three markets - the Honda Accord. 

The Accord was scored as the benchmark at 100% Other rivals were scored against it, and from this the engineers had to decide whether to match or better these bench marks for the Mondeo. Amongst these rivals were the Peugeot 405, Toyota Camry, Vauxhall Cavailer (or its twin the Opel Vectra) and the Volkswagen Passat.
However these benchmarks needed to be set ahead of what the competion would also be producing in six years time.
 

 

A designer creating a full size proposal.

Create the most compliant chassis in the world but clothe it with the most staid sheet metal (step forward Audi 80), the enthusiastic will heap praise. However the demographic 2.4 children man in the street will buy from a rival manufacturer, purely for the “wow” factor. It can be a very fine line. Nobody buys a Toyota Camry to impress the neighbours (even if it will never let you down).
So with this in mind Ford top brass decided upon a stylish cab-forward design, letting design offices of California, Cologne, Dearborn and Torino (Ghia) put forward proposals for customer clinic testing. These “clinics” were carried out across the U.S. Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain whilst the engineer’s were developing the drive train under innocuous looking Sierra skins. Eleven mules were developed through 1988, along with the new “Zeta” (nee’ Zetec) engines. At this time John Oldfield became executive director of programme offices, so David Price (a director of power train programmes) now headed up the CDW27 project, reporting to Lindsey Halstead - chairman of Ford of Europe.

 

 

Note the extended wheelbase of this sierra bodied “mule”. Hans Lehmann

 

  Come march 1989 the projects objectives were hammered out, three months later in June they became finalised. (Only the introduction of the Nissan Primera demanded a revision to what was now the new standard in refinement). By September 1989 the first mechanically correct Mondeo prototypes were built, with accurate production prototypes coming on stream early in 1991.
In total 400 vehicles prior to the engineering sign off a year later. Almost two years later on 23rd November 1992, production started ready for the world launch at the upcoming Geneva Salon.