Twelve weeks in and the Mondeo has already racked up more than 3,000 miles. I’m not a high mileage driver and a large chunk of this distance was covered during a trip to Holland. It was a great opportunity to test the Mondeo’s mile-munching ability, on a comfort level for myself and my three passengers but also to see if some prolonged motorway cruising could improve the mediocre average mpg figure.

The cavernous boot accommodated our luggage with room to spare and rear passengers get plenty of legroom, so there were no complaints from the back seat. The annoying parcel shelf, which dislodges itself when you open the boot, was less pleasing.

The longest part of the journey was 230 miles from Calais to Amsterdam and this is where the Mondeo excelled, wafting us along in quiet comfort without a backache in sight – the seats are impressively comfortable.

Economy topped out at an indicated 49mpg which is a slight improvement over my average 45mpg.

The adaptive cruise control, which detects traffic ahead and will brake and speed up for you (to your set speed), is perfect for this kind of motorway driving.

Something that I hadn’t noticed until on foreign soil was the lack of kph on the speedo. After a few minutes scrolling through dash menus I located a tick-box which brought up the kph display digitally below the mph.