2006 Ford Mondeo – Driven To Write

Anniversary Waltz 2017: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In a series of articles, Driven to Write gives 2017 the meta treatment.

It’s normally customary at this time to reflect upon the just-departed year, its themes, its happenings and how these events might offer some guide to the coming one, but my DTW colleague-in-arms has already covered that. No, what I am offering today (and over the coming days) is to all intents and purposes a series of retrospectives on a series of retrospectives. Well after all it’s Driven to Write you’ve blundered upon, what exactly were you expecting?

Over the past 24 months, I’ve chronicled various (arguably?) significant cars, marking their various anniversaries and have found it to be a rich seam. After all, it’s pleasing to Continue reading “Anniversary Waltz 2017: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

Theme: Concepts – Introduction

What is a concept car? What was its past like and how did its future evolve? Why do we have concept cars at all?

We are late in the automobile era. It is ending as cars become banalities and as the illusion of mass personal transportation dissolves. Consequently, the car’s future might even be over already. In 1971 the future was staggeringly unlike the present. In a properly realised future all signs of the present are gone. Continue reading “Theme: Concepts – Introduction”

Three Years Late to Market

The new Ford Mondeo will finally be on sale in 2015, just three long, long years after the launch of the car it was based on.

Above we see the 2000 Ford Mondeo, styled under the reign of Claude Lobo and Chris Bird. Then we have the 2006 version credited to Martin Smith but which is probably mostly a Chris Bird car. And finally, we have the 2015 car which I gather was designed in the US and has been sold as the Ford Fusion. The photos speak for themselves. Continue reading “Three Years Late to Market”