Free Car Mag 6 | Page 15

Used Car Matt AUDI A8 vs FORD MONDEO AUDI A8 MOT failure rate 18.62% Annual  Service £325 Pads and discs £210 A tyre £145.62 If you need to do a lot of motorway miles, you need a little comfort. But the question is, do you buy the automotive equivalent of Lidl’s best, or Waitrose nearly-gone-off Car? Y our choice of car says something about you, whether you like it not.  You can protest that practical concerns like spending a lot of time on the motorway, and wanting to feel fresh when you step out at the other end is what’s behind your choice, but even that says something about you.  With a decent budget, like £20,000 (well, low interest loans are out there again), you have a lot of motorway cruisers to choose from. My advice would be to pick either a Ford Mondeo (top of range Titanium X) or an Audi A8. No other car magazine has ever put these two head-to-head because they not competitors. The Audi is a luxury limousine, designed to ferry European leaders from the Parliament in Brussels to Eurostar. The Ford Mondeo used to be aimed at the middle income family man, now it’s posher, but it’s just what you have if your company car fleet is not with BMW or Audi. One is a saloon, the other a hatchback. At this budget you can have a one year old Ford or a four year old Audi. One turns heads, the other doesn’t. One is going to be very expensive if it goes wrong, the other is going to be just expensive. One is under manufacturer warranty, the other is ‘sold as seen.’ The lack of similarity just goes on. But they are both very good at cruising down the motorway, at 45-50MPG, while supporting your lower back. Both have Sat Nav, air con, electric windows, good sound systems and well, what else do you really need? So how do you decide between the two? Well it depends how you see yourself. Conventional, then its the Ford, or more dynamic, then go for Audi. FORD MONDEO MOT failure rate 23.4% Annual  Service