There are lots of makes of cars that suffer from picking up water from flooded roads.

Diesels more so beause most are turbo charged and the turbo acts like a hoover, so when you lift of the throttle the turbo can still be spinning momentairly and act like a hoover. A diesel engine is very high compression as well so there is almost nil clearance between the piston & cylinder head and because water doesn't compress damage can occur.

Flood water should always be treated with care, but a lot of motorist seemed determined to drive through as fast as possible. No thought is given to how the water can be forced into many components including clutches, gearbox breather tubes, wiring looms etc apart from the air intake. Alternators & air con pumps get drenched !Thats without taking into account the fact that when a road is flooded a manhole cover may of lifted.

I can report I have rebuilt many, any water flooded engines & recovered many seriously damaged cars where manhole covers have lifted & the driver has never given it a thought ! & suffered bent chassis legs or bent or collasped subframes!

So always drive with caution through flooded water. Personnally I wouldn't say Mondeo's suffer more than any other, apart from the fact there are many on the road so statiscally the figures may be higher.

The snorkel for the airbox opens right behind the grill, just to the side of the passenger-side headlight. It's not particularly low-down (it's about the same as my old Passat), but if you went too fast through any flooding and got a bow-wave, it could suck water in.