I bought a pre-registered 62 plate Mondeo 163 Business Edition in late May from Ford Direct, so officially it's 2nd hand, but it came with only 9 miles on the clock. It was exactly what I was looking for, you could say my dream car. Unfortunately it has not all been smooth sailing.

The clutch failed after 6,500 miles and it was in the garage (where I had bought it from) for a week whilst negotiations with Ford were carried out and eventually clutch, flywheel, bearings, seals, etc were replaced.

Within a few weeks I was experiencing 2 intermittent issues, both of which occur under similar circumstances, under acceleration once the car is fully warmed up. They could be related but they provide different symptoms.

Firstly, when accelerating up through the gears occasionally when I hit the higher gear around 2000 rpm the car will not accelerate despite depressing the accelerator and the rev counter will oscillate between approximately 1950-2400 rpm. The car still feels smooth but it will not drive through this situation and accelerate. The only way I have found to stop this is to ease off for a couple of seconds, allow deceleration and then accelerate again, which is far from ideal as frequently this scenario occurs when trying to accelerate on major roads (eg pulling away from roundabouts on dual carriageways). This happens most frequently when changing into 4th and 5th gears, but can occur in 3rd and 6th as well.

Second issue also occurs when attempting to accelerate, but I have only noticed this in 6th gear. When travelling around 70mph, occasionally when I try to accelerate and the road is slightly uphill it feels like the car is unexpectedly hit by some wind buffeting and there is a faint sound that reminds me of a comb being run over the sharp edge of something. This only happens occasionally and only lasts for a second or so, there is no warning. It sounds to be coming from in front and left of the driver position, but due to the infrequent nature it has been difficult to ascertain a real pattern to this issue. This issue can also occur when the cruise control is in operation, around 70mph, and the road goes up an incline (even a shallow on). The car clearly registers that something has changed and automatically disengages the cruise control, which due to being unexpected and going uphill, causes a relatively rapid deceleration ...... again not the ideal on a motorway.

I booked the car back into the garage and gave them a full written description of the problems that I experienced. When their engineer test drove the vehicle he reported that it had clutch slip under heavy load ...... I suppose at least they agreed that there was some issue.

(Incidentally, I'm not an aspiring racing driver, so no crash gear changing, not do I ride the clutch in traffic. I put 100,000 miles on my previous Mondeo without a problem with the original clutch.)

So the car has now done 15,000 miles and is back in the garage for another week whilst they take out the gearbox again and investigate the clutch issues. However the whole scenario does leave me with a couple of questions:

1. Does this sound like it is entirely clutch related? (I suspect that there may also be issues with the ECU / EMS)

2. I now have no confidence in this car with regards to its long term reliability. What can I reasonably expect Ford / the garage to offer as options as I now want to get rid of it?

Sounds awful. Was it not a 'ford direct' car from their scheme. If so it's guaranteed

Does sound clutch related.

Get it sorted before the initial 12 months old,i'd ask for a replacement as its done for your confidence,the no feeling of power on a motorway on/off ramp,at best dangerous, our american cousins have better rights concerning goods purchases,dont they "ford" realise the implications for them or the manager of this showroom if you are unfortunate enough to have a mishap in the car they botched and would not replace?

55 Black V6 ghiax,s/s straight thru,57i cold fed,st spioler,6sp manual,black hekos,red brakes

Well, picked up the car tonight, another new clutch has been installed, issue was with a faulty drive shaft seal ..... apparently.

First clutch was replaced due to faulty slave cylinder seal.

So 15000 miles in on a 62 plate vehicle and it has already had 2 new clutches. Time to ditch it, I can't afford to keep it on the road when the warranty runs out.