New Ford Mondeo is still top of the class

As a motoring hack — or, indeed, a critic of any kind — it is always a tad worrying when you are complimented for being too kind to any given subject. In my case, it gets very worrying indeed when car company executives pally-up to tell you that you’ve really been too kind to their brand in recent times.

A case in point might be Ford, which has impressed me greatly in the past decade or so for producing a variety of machines which have, largely, been class-leaders. This has consequently been the subject of much complimentary praise from this quarter. It has not always been thus, of course.

I recall an incident many years ago when the boss of Ford Ireland was so incensed by my having called one version of the company’s Granada model “a heap” that he wrote a virulent letter of protest to my chief executive railing against my strident opinions. Thankfully for me, my boss, while warning me to be a bit more diplomatic in future, responded by reaffirming my right to reasonable subjective criticism.