The official figures on all cars are well off the truth and get worse with every new model that comes out. All manufacturers know how to get the tests to give figures that are unachievable on planet Earth, you just have to accept that fact.

Stop Start (or whatever they call it) is the biggest con of the lot, how on earth can it help. On the motorway it has no effect whatsoever since you never stop, in town after the first 5 or 6 sets of lights the system senses the battery voltage is down and until you have been on a decent run it does not work again. It probably works nicely in a test cell during the official test but not where I live.

I simply accept that if I buy a 1.6 TDi in a family hatch I will likely get 45 - 50 mpg and not the magic 62.8 mpg that most manufacturers claim (it directly related to 119 CO's and £30 a year RFL).

I cannot comment on the Mondeo but the Fiesta econetic used by one our engineers achieves better figures than the official Ford figures.We receive figures of all our lease vehicles every month and all the vehicles apart from a couple reach or are better than the official figure provided by the manufacturer.With over 120 vehicles on our fleet which cover a good cross section of models my Mercedes CLC does far better than the official figures as does my sons BMW 330, I must say employees and partners are on a bonus if they achieve certain conditions mpg is one of the metrics so to drive in an economical manner is to our advantage.