@wheelsaustralia 95
leather seats, minimal embellishment and a relatively
austere feel. This is Calais motoring 2018-style, with nary
a hint of stripy velour or chromy sparkle, though what
you lose in visual glitz you definitely gain in engineering
depth. There’s a stallion hiding beneath the Calais’
dowdy dress sense.
At a razor-sharp $37,790, the Ford Mondeo Trend
is almost the Calais you have when you aren’t having
a Calais. Its leather-edged sports seats with tactile
microfibre centres allow you to sink into them (unlike
the all-leather chairs in the $44,790 Titanium) while
from the outside, you’d never know this 18-inch-wheeled
Trend costs more than three grand less than the Holden.
Stretch to Titanium spec and you cop a faceful
of visual va-va-voom (sequential indicators, LED
headlights, bad-arse 19s, all-glass roof, the lot), but it’s
the Mondeo Trend that best aligns with Calais. Even
Mondeo’s circa-2012 fastback shape was clearly the
inspiration for Opel’s take on the same style.
Hyundai’s facelifted Sonata can’t compete with the
level of choice offered by Toyota, Holden and Ford, or
even its distantly related Kia Stinger cousin. Just two
variants remain on the grid in 2018 – base $30,990
Active and loaded $45,490 Premium, running the same
2.0-litre turbo-petrol four and eight-speed automatic as
the $46,990 Stinger 200S – which means if you want a
Sonata with grunt, it’s Premium or nothing.
Hyundai has left almost nothing untouched in its
quest for garnering the Sonata some attention, at least
visually. The Korean brand’s Californian styling studio
went wild in transforming the old model’s quietly
handsome shape into something that looks virtually
unrelated, and the result is questionable. The facelifted
Sonata’s combination of pinched grille, fussy details, and
flat-panelled rear, with italicised bootlid lettering, don’t
add up to the kind of sophisticated touches we’ve come
to expect from one of the world’s burgeoning automotive
superpowers. Weirdly, it looks smaller than before, and
lacks the on-road presence of its predecessor.
A similar tale applies inside. Unlike the previous-
gen Sonata (badged i45 in Australia), which blended
quite a radical exterior with a similarly rakish interior,
the current car’s geometrically simple dashboard – in
itself no major crime – now simply looks chintzy. It’s the
equivalent of adding extra ingredients to a recipe in
order to fix it, at which point you realise it’s beyond the
point of no return.
There’s bucketloads of equipment inside the Sonata
Premium: full glass roof with opening sunroof, heated
and cooled front seats with two-position memory for the
driver, rear door blinds, wireless phone charging. But
the mis-matching materials, faux Paul Smith striped
trim inserts, excess of plasti-chrome and curious utility/
ergonomic flaws (why do the doors only take 600ml
bottles? And why does the flat rear seat squander all
that legroom?) convey expedience rather than expense.
Contrast all that with Kia’s holistically designed
Stinger. It’s this group’s wildcard in that it’s a rear-wheel
drive liftback-sedan, supposedly competing in a larger
car category. Yet if you read the fine print, the Stinger
is actually the shortest and lowest car here, riding on by
far the longest wheelbase. It’s all about proportion – that
crucial determining factor the Sonata so desperately
lacks – and the Stinger exudes copious amounts of it.
We wanted a base $46,990 Stinger 200S (now with
standard AEB and collision warning) for this test but
could only get our hands on a $53K 200Si. So if you
can imagine the same Stinger without front parking
sensors or lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise, auto wipers,
a luggage net, a pair of subwoofers, and with a smaller
touchscreen and non-leather trim, then here’s your 200S- still the dearest car here but arguably the richest.
You can tell that the team responsible for the interior
architecture were on the same page as the aesthetes who
Mondeo
musings
It took more than
two years for
today’s Mondeo to
launch in Europe,
following its debut
at the 2012 Detroit
Show, owing to a
production switch
from Belgium to
Spain. But there’s
some life left in the
current European
Mondeo. Expect an
extensive facelift
to surface next
year, possibly at
the Geneva Show
in March, before
reaching Oz later
in 2019. Changes
will be substantial,
including a heavily
reworked interior,
a styling makeover
and mechanical
upgrades, though
Mondeo’s Euro-
built future isn’t
guaranteed. Like
the next US Focus,
there’s a (slim)
chance the fifth-
gen Mondeo may
be built in China.The Mondeo is arguably the sweetest dynamic
compromise here, the majority of the time