How many miles do you think you could put on a car in a week? Well, back in 1993 - as Autocar writers James Thomas, Allan Muir, Peter McSean, Peter Robinson, Gavin Conway, Michael Harvey and Steve Sutcliffe found out - the answer was 12,000. Just.
Their mission was to take the brand new Ford Mondeo on a non-stop, tag-team grand tour of Europe that would take in as many countries as you could count. By the end of it, as the plan went, the car would have driven the equivalent of a round trip to Tokyo, and covered the kind of mileage that most owners would take a year to rack up. But would it survive the trip? Read on to find out.
Halfway around the world in a week
Contents: introduction; day one - Calais to The Rock in 20 hours; day two - back to Calais the twisty way; day three - ten countries in 24 hours; day four - heading for Italy's heel; day five - a fine time for a fuel strike; day six - it all starts to go wrong; day seven - 2326 miles in a day.
Introduction
Get in your car, make yourself comfortable, start it up and then drive to Tokyo. How long will that take you? A month, a couple of months. What if you drove there and back, how long then? Chances are you’d miss the kids’ summer holidays, yes?
No. In February, steered by a team of 12 Autocar & Motor drivers, a 1.6-litre Ford Mondeo LX clocked up 12,000 miles – that’s Tokyo and back and more – in precisely one week. It was, without any shadow of a doubt, the hardest test we’ve ever put a car through. Driving halfway around the world in a week is an achievement in itself. We had bloody good fun doing it (as you’ll read) and the difference between success and failure came down to one petrol stop.
But that was not the reason we did it. We wanted to know how an entry-level Mondeo stood up to what is probably the toughest test ever to appear in a car magazine.
We haven’t felt the need to do this sort of a test before. But two days in the south of France back in January convinced us that the Mondeo is a car of exceptional composure, refinement and sheer mile-destroying competence. And while two days were enough to tell us the car was head and shoulders above its rivals, it was clear it had not showed us all its tricks.
Ford says Mondeos won’t just be reps’ cars; they certainly deserve more. Nonetheless, we’re pretty sure they’ll quickly find their way to the top of the wish-lists of the nation’s high-milers. Even if you find those guys a pain in the butt, you can’t deny that their day-long ton-up grind does teach them a thing or two. If you can’t beat them…
But we didn’t just want to telescope a year’s repping into seven days. Clocking up that sort of mileage, and doing it in the manner in which we did, puts us in a unique position: nobody outside Ford knows that car better than we do now. You won’t find a better informed judgement. A car like the Mondeo deserves nothing less.
So belt up, and don’t forget the passport.
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Day one: Calais to The Rock in 20 hours, by James Thomas
“It’s 1600 miles to Gibraltar, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”
This is leg number one, 8pm at Calais. Thomas at the wheel, Muir co-driving and Sutcliffe trying to get some shuteye on the backseat. Not a chance. We’re all incredibly fired up for this truncated European tour, the A26 out of Calais is reasonably light with traffic, REM are playing on the CD and we’ve got a brand new Mondeo 1.6 LX that’s fresh off the line at Genk and just gagging for miles.
But 10 miles out of Calais the fog’s denser than anything horror writer James Herbert could dream up, guaranteeing a white-knuckle drive for all. Probably as a diversion, Muir is busy entering the first set of notes in the pad we’ve brought along to record the finer moments of this jaunt.
Here’s a flavour: “Saturday 1.00am, fill up with gas. Only the super unleaded (read super expensive) pumps are in use; coachloads of French school kids wearing appalling tracksuits are everywhere.”
We head off into the early morning having completed a fuel stop that would impress the Newman/Haas team. Muir has taken the wheel and we’re on the A26/E17 Lyon bound. We hit the city limits at the lowest ebb in the traffic flow because the whole town is dispatched in what seems like a matter of minutes. By the time I look up again, the huge Elf petroleum works are fast disappearing in the rearview mirror. Time to catch some zees.
Blimey; it’s 4.45am. Sutcliffe has his clog down, Montpellier’s gone and we’re on the A9 to Barcelona, well on the way to Gibraltar. We hit the Spanish border at 6am and some impromptu maths says there’s time for some breakfast and a cursory look at the myriad of gonks you can buy in Spanish service stations.
We eat, I drive, the major towns falling to our unyielding right feet in relentless fashion. Valencia bites the dust at 10.05am; at 11.00am Benidorm passes to shouts of “Ere we go!”; then we dice with a black BMW 3-series coupe through Malaga.
Saturday 6pm, and we’ve made it to The Rock in 20 hours having covered roughly 1600 miles – just 13 per cent of the whole marathon completed.
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Day two: back to Calais the twisty way, by Allan Muir
To prove that we had got as far south as we could without the need for a snorkel, we decided to nip into Gibraltar to get our passports stamped. Told that it had to be done on the way out, we drove through the border figuring that we could do a quick U-turn and be off. But we hadn’t banked on the officious policeman who told us that we had to go to the back of an unbelievably long queue.
Sutcliffe leapt out of the car and had a blazing row with the intransigent bobby, who made us drive through the town to the back of the queue, which is where we sat, fuming, for an hour and a half. What a waste of time. To make matters worse, the border officials refused to stamp our passports, so it was all in vain.
Vowing that we would never return to Gibraltar but knowing that we had some time in hand, we treating ourselves to a well-earned meal in Marbella. But I was beginning to feel ill. Soon after we started retracing our steps towards Calais, I was forced to ask Sutcliffe to stop the car. All I could do was hang my head out of the door…
While I was recovering on the back seat, Thomas put in a dramatic piece of driving on the twisty road over the mountains towards Murcia. It was dark and it was raining. Sutcliffe, nodding off in the co-driver’s seat, kept waking with a start to see right-angle corners looming very fast. I became aware of our pace when I started sliding from side to side on the back seat, cracking my head on the door around every left-hander.
By the time we reached the next fuel stop I was feeling much better, so I took the wheel for a stint that took us rapidly up the east coast of Spain through the early hours of Sunday morning. After a quick breakfast stop near Barcelona, Calais didn’t seem so far away.
The roads had all been amazingly quiet for a half-term weekend and we were comfortably ahead of schedule, so by the time we got to Reims we didn’t feel too guilty about making a burger run. We all felt self-conscious about our appearance – young children ran for cover in the restaurant.
By the time we got back to Calais for the change-over, 49-hours after we started, the Mondeo had covered 3207 miles. Remarkably, we all said we would happily do it all over again…
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Day three: ten countries in 24 hours, by Peter McSean
Remember the ‘60s film about a coachload of tourists on a whistle-stop tour of Europe called If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium? Prepare to read the abridged version: 10 countries in a day, or If it’s 11pm, this must be Belgium.
I’d always thought it was possible – given the right car. But is the car Gavin Conway and I are about to be given by Muir and co, a 1.6-litre Mondeo, the right car? Among the thousand things racing through my mind, as I sit apprehensively at the table nearest the door in the Calais terminal café, that is one.
Our mission is essentially simple. Be at Peter and Erica Robinson’s front gates in northern Italy at 23.30 on Monday having covered 1500 miles. If Gavin and I fail through no fault of our own, then back luck. If we fail because our escapade is too ambitious, we’ll be shot.
I finish my last coffee until Italy, take the keys from a jubilant Muir and pray for good luck. One huge traffic jam, a wrong turn or bad fog and… we’d might as well shoot ourselves and save everyone else the bother.
We drive the 200 metres to passport control, where a bored Monsieur Duanier eventually chistens a pristine page on my passport. Our stamp collection has begun. Time 21.30.
Belgium is the next target but in our excitement we miss the autoroute out of Calais and head down the painfully slow road to Dunkirk. Then miss the autoroute there, too. “U-turn and follow that lorry!” By the time we hit the peage we are already behind schedule.
Which is probably all right except wisps of fog start to dance over the heated front screen. We drop to 50mph, then 40mph and at times below 30mph. Forget the schedule for now. Forget, too, that this is one hell of a way for two grown men to spend St Valentine’s night.
Out of the mist appears the Belgian border. Stamp number two, 23.15. Now the thick fog turns into the freezing stuff. We’re glad the roads are empty – we don’t want to find out how many cars you can fit in the boot of a Mondeo. Suddenly our turn off to Maastricht (a must on a frontier-crossing marathon) catches us napping and we see it disappear behind us. We are forced to enter Holland via Germany.
German border, 01.00, Monday. No one to stamp our passports. We continue into Aachen – “What are we doing in Aachen?” – where we get heroically lost.
Forty-five minutes later and I start to wonder where I packed the revolver. Does Maastricht really exist outside of political rhetoric?
We never discover, but suddenly find ourselves at a Dutch border, 01.50. Cross German border 02.00 and add to the stamp collection.
03.30 and disaster. Luxembourg, it seems, is closed. No one anywhere at or even near the border. Waste time looking then have to be content with a photo as proof.
Germany remains a delightful, liberating 110mph memory, with a sight-seeing trip close to an indicated 125mph. Our schedule now looks do-able.
Austria passes by at 10.30, Switzerland at 11.30, and, at 12.00 we arrive in Liechtenstein. It’s truly High Noon, too, for the border guard doesn’t want to play ball. In a heated discussion I nearly get the back of my hand stamped… Finally the good guys win and ride out of town.
The glorious, snow-lined Brenner Pass corkscrews us to Italy, 14.30, and we are on schedule for the first time since… ever.
Before long we erroneously enter Verona town centre. And can’t find out way out. Something flies out the window – it’s the schedule.
Finally the g-force from the ever decreasing circle flings us clear and we hightail it down to our last and most exciting border – Slovenia. Tension pervades the air and car searches are going on, so we leave the car on the Italian side and cross the border on foot. Stamped at 19.00, we leave quickly and gratefully.
Then it sinks in. We’ve done it. Ten countries in 22 hours! A fabulous 10 – the perfect score for our cartographic gymnastics. Elation sweeps over us in a big way.
And again when we hand the car over to Team Robinson at 23.45 with 1604 miles on the trip.
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Day four: heading for Italy's heel, by Peter Robinson
We swap house keys for car keys and set off towards the sunrise. We’ll drive east to Padua, and then south down the coast as far into Italy’s heel as the autostrada goes. Taranto, here we come.
The so-familiar landscape is eerily different – spotlit churches and walled castles a gilded pattern in the velvety blackness.
Graceland is playing: my travelling companion is 49 years old. She’s the wife of my second marriage…
Companion? She’s already asleep.
Ferrara, Bologna. Soon Faenza. Modena? I’ve turned west instead of south-east. A U-turn at Modena Sud and we’re back on track. Bologna again. Faenza, Forli. That’s better.
First stop for fuel and coffee and 299 miles. We swap seats. Rain, snow and a diversion to the wrong side of the autostrada slow us down. I sleep.
We swap again. Sunrise, over a chilly and flat Adriatic.
Taranto, nine hours and 669 miles behind us. We stop for fuel and photographs between naval and fishing fleets. A cold wind blows. Who’d be a fisherman?
We double back to meet the autostrada that heads west across the Appennines to Naples. More snow and slippery roads before the west coast and tentative sunshine.
It’s a de Chirico tour – glimpses of history contrast with the ever-present autostrada. King of the road? The road is king.
Past Rome, up the beauteous Tiber valley towards Florence. Orvieto tops a hill on our left, signs promise us Perugia, Assisi, Siena. Another time.
South of Florence trucks belch fumes, sway across lanes, overtake without signals. We turn east to Lucca, they continue north. Through the Appennines again. Then north to La Spezia and east to Parma. The Appennines for the third time…
Here bodyclock logic says to turn for home, an hour away on the map. But we’ve only done 18 hours and 1320 miles. So we swing north-west again around Turin and up to Ivrea, then south again.
At last, the odo and the dashboard clock agree – we can head for home. We come in the gate just after 23.30, our contribution stops at 1737.8 miles. We then rush into the kitchen for a funnel and… well, that’s where Gavin picks up the story.
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Day five: a fine time for a fuel strike, by Gavin Conway
It looks like the Italians are about to get even in a very big way. No good apologising now for the rude things we’ve written about the switchgear on Italian cars, the petrol strike is going ahead at 10pm. A petrol strike. Not good when we could be facing more Italian miles than a tank of unleaded can handle.
It’s 23.30 and we are taking over the Mondeo, greeting Team Robinson with a spare fuel tank filled before the strike.
After brimming the Mondeo’s tank and my tasselled loafers – they will accept unleaded as well as four star – we head west into a cool Italian night with Chip, aka Peter McSean and my co-driver, skilfully bossing the Mondeo along. I’m beginning to resent Chip’s macho leather driving gloves, as I have no convincing ‘road warrior’ gear at all.
We are now cruising fashionably on the A26 southbound and the petrol strike has yielded a fabulous benefit – we are on a glass-smooth motorway and there is absolutely no traffic. I wonder if the damn thing is closed? Chip is in petrol-head heaven and isn’t wasting any time at all, no siree.
Romantic sounding place names like Alessandria are dissolving quickly into the past and I reckon if we don’t get lost our fuel load will get us to the south of France.
At Genoa, we get lost.
A stupidly simple matter of going left instead of right and now I’m really worried. The good and noble Chip is coasting the Mondeo down hills.
It looks like we are back on course and heading west out of Genoa – the road is a fantastic series of orange phosphorescent-lit mountain tunnels that make me feel like I’m inside a video game.
I’m feeling better about the fuel level now, saying movie-grade things like “Well Chip O’Lata, looks like we’ll make the Franco/Italian border after all.”
We are across the border and driving into a muddy dawn, running late because of another bloody missed turn performed by a gloveless driver. Chip takes over and gorgeous swathes of France dotted with lumps of history are disappearing into our logbook. The only cop we’ve seen looks silly and impotent driving a Renault R4.
After losing the toss with a Toulouse toll-taker over what constitutes change from a 500-franc note, we point the Mondeo towards Calais and our rendezvous with the next team. It’s dark now and the rain is coming down and the romantic adventure of our marathon has me talking like Gary Cooper: “Well Chip, looks like we’ll get this rig to Calais after all…”
Then, as with all truly great movies, it ends too soon.
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Day six: it all starts to go wrong, by Michael Harvey
This wasn’t a pace-setting opener, nor a garlands and glory anchor leg. Just grab the car, take the mileage over 10,000 and get it to the anchormen on time. Shouldn’t be difficult.
Problems. I turn up at Dover without my passport, which is in London, an hour and a half away at best. Timetables tell us we’re going to be at least two hours late, and there’s no way of getting in touch with K23 FMC. (We’re unaware that on the other side of the channel McSean and Conway are still en route back from Calino in Italy). Contemplating as many as 300 lost miles, the Eastern Docks feel like a graveyard.
We make the meet in Calais in the early hours, having to truncate a 2000-mile leg to Bologna to a 1500-mile round trip to Nice. Fog, rain and fuel stops knock 10mph off our terminal velocity, but we still manage extremely good averages in our first four hours as we head towards sunrise and Lyon. If we drop the pace, though, we won’t get through it before the rush.
A long fuel stop means we add only 55-miles in our fifth hour. As Lyon gets closer, there’s silence in the Mondeo – the possibility of us blowing it altogether dawns.
But we make it, and some good mileage after sun-up gets us to Nice by 09.45, 748 miles and eight and a half hours after Calais. Two espressos later we head back, anticipating problems with a force six mistral south of Lyon. Sure enough, we struggle to make a ton and the Mondeo shows the first *** in its armour; it isn’t entirely wind-proof.
A rickety old police 305 estate delays us further. We’re not alone. A poor Ferrari F40 driver is playing tag with the gendarmes. Then he gives up and dives into a petrol station to cool off, and gets a good look at the French Red Arrows who are practising overhead.
The mistral fades north of Lyon and we string together some serious mile-crunching hours, reaching Calais 20 minutes early, 1504 miles after leaving. Not a bad distance for 19 hours, but way short of what I’d hoped. There’s no sign of our team so we make what turns out to be a crucial decision; we fill up with gas, giving the guys the best possible chance, but I think it’s a way-outside one. The hand-over makes McLaren look slow. If anyone’s going to do this, these guys are.
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Day seven: 2326 miles in a day, by Steve Sutcliffe
Nice Mr Editor Harvey hands us the keys with a vaguely forlorn look on his face and says: “Sorry boys but we’ve blown it. It’s out of the question.”
We climb inside the Mondeo’s used-smelling cabin, check the time and the odometer – 8.04pm, 10,328 miles – and wonder. The road test editor and co-pilot Frankel turns to me and sighs the eternal words, “You do realise this is impossible.”
The deal, if there is anything remaining that can be referred to as a deal, is this. In the next 23 hours 56 minutes, in order to achieve the desired 12,000-mile mark, the three of us (we took a third driver) will have to cover 2326 miles, a distance roughly approximate to travelling between London and Newcastle nine times. I have a girlfriend who goes to university in Newcastle and on a Friday night on a good run it takes about five and a half hours. Times nine equals 50 hours. Hmmm…
But what the hell. We can’t just give up now. We at least have to give it a shot.
And so begins the most extraordinary 23 hours and 56 minutes I have ever spent inside a car.
It doesn’t kick off at all well, either. Two hours and a couple of hundred miles further south our science, so precise before we’d set off, comes to a juddering halt at the side of the autoroute between Reims and Dijon. Ashamed as I am to say it, we had run clean out of petrol. Thank God I’d stashed a spare gallon in the boot the previous Sunday night.
Taking note that when the fuel gauge is reading a quarter full it actually means there is about a gallon, certainly no more than two, left in the tank, we continue. Flat out, apart from fuel stops and peages, through the entire night. Past Dijon, through Lyon and its never-ending road-works, down to Montpellier and then back up towards Toulouse and Bordeaux. At a quarter past eleven the Mondeo, 20 hours 44 minutes ahead of schedule, breaks the original 10,000-mile barrier. But with the 12,000-mile target in mind, we’re almost too busy to notice.
Daybreak. We’re through Bordeaux and, having got as far north as Orleans, we’re heading back towards Clermont Ferrand and Lyon. Our average speed after 17 hours is higher than it needs to be. It has been an entertaining and occasionally and involving evening’s driving.
Realistically, the one thing that can prevent us now is Lyon; busy, smelly old Lyon. That or ‘The Feds’ who have been conspicuous by their absence during the night but are bound to be waiting somewhere for us in the daylight. Fortunately the one time they are, just before the peage at Reims, we have been warned by a stream of cars flashing their headlights. Now why don’t they do that in this country?
An entry from the diary with four hours to go: “We must average 89mph, feeling numb but buzzing with adrenaline. Car is still fantastic. Anyone trading a Sierra in for this thing just isn’t going to believe their luck.”
One hour to go and another 88 miles must pass beneath the Mondeo’s wheels. But we need fuel and there is the peage at Calais to negotiate. We fuel up, looking more like escapees from the local nut house than respectable motoring writer type of people, pay the nice lady in the booth and weld the pedal to the floorboards.
We arrive at Calais but there are too few miles on the clock. So we drive into the terminal car park and, much to the bemusement of the onlookers silently waiting to catch the next ferry, turn round in a cloud of smoke to head straight back in the direction we’re just come from – 40 miles and 22 minutes left. At the peage (which I have been through 10 times in the past seven days) we turn around again and head back for Calais but realise we’re misjudged the distance for the second time. By Calais there will be only 11,992 miles on the clock. So we take the autoroute towards Boulogne and hope it doesn’t run out on us.
And it doesn’t. It sounds painfully corny but as the end of the autoroute sign looms into view the ‘3’ of 12,653 becomes a ‘4’ and our 12,000-mile marathon is over. The Mondeo’s digital clock, I’m not joking, is reading 7.58pm. After 168 hours’ non-stop running, we have made it with a little over 90 seconds to spare. The final three words in the car’s diary are, quite simply, “told you so.”
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