One year ago I bought a 2001 Mk3 Mondeo 2.5 Ghia X. Was it a a great buy?  

That engine sounds gorgeous, I have a 2005 1.8 Zetec in black, a great car, my first Ford love it, driven many Fords over 3 decades they’re always easy to drive and always fairly comfortable.

The appeal of the V6 on old luxo-barges is smooth driving & if like me you work shifts & leave home at strange hours of the night in winter you want a car that heats up quickly. They are at best mediocre on petrol although on motorways mpg well into the thirties can be achieved with steady driving & can also be ULEZ exempt. Finally in my experience the V6’s often have lower mileage than the diesels & haven’t been used as workhorses all their lives & are usually accompanied by better service histories by former keepers who cared for them. This is an unmeasurable bonus masked by people’s fixation on the extra fuel costs. As for the Mondeo Ghia X I owned a Mk 2 saloon, it was only £360 to buy, drove well & was very comfortable. The heated leather seats & windscreen were a major plus in the winter months. It only had a 2.0L 4 cylinder engine producing 130bhp on the automatic gearbox so it was it was sluggish but I don’t care for performance. I would happily have another Ghia X with the 2.5L V6 auto next time. At the moment I’m on Rover 75’s & most of the issues you discussed are similar in that community. I’d also like a Jaguar X-Type estate with a 2.5 or 3.0 V6 automatic & I want it precisely because it’s a redressed (albeit heavily modified) Mondeo underneath!

1:26 You hold the wheel like you're frightened of it.

Problems consisting of blocked cats all three of them ouch. Costly repair! Also rear springs destroyed Vacuum leak that was a bugger had to do the old school smoke test and blow a fag through one of the vacuum pipes until i found the culprit, it was a tiny L shaped pipe underneath the throttle body you can barely see the thing. When i finally managed to get the pipe off it was actually completely melted no wonder it was running rough! Also the passengers door stopped working the drivers window motor broke, glove box lock no longer worked, bonnet struts needed replacing, rear middle seat belt jammed so i did the best thing and cut it out 🤣🤣 after i did that i found out that if you smack the back of the seat it normally un jams typical!! So all in all its been pretty much a pain in the ass since we have owned it but now after a few too many ffs 🤦‍♂️ Its all sorted and on my way into work this bmw pulled up along side at the traffic lights obviously i knew his game so into manual it went with this being the first proper take off since work had been done eager to see what this 2.5v6 would actually do, it left the bmw in the dust 😊😊😊 it definitely made me smile. As for the celica that would still munch up the mondeo 😁 just saying 😉