Next Ford Mondeo takes fastback crossover shape, redesigned interior houses full-width display panel

Ford announced its plan to stop selling sedans in North America due to insufficient demand, which means dropping the likes of the Ford Mondeo from its product line-up in that market. It has since been revealed that the D-segment sedan’s nameplate will live on, albeit as a crossover-styled estate model.

Now, the latest images to have surfaced depict the forthcoming crossover prototype in what appears to be a testing facility, seen here with a sloping, fastback-style roofline and rear screen courtesy of images posted by Chinese website Autohome.

Here, the camouflaged prototype wears a mesh-style front grille with a concealed oval badge and slim headlamps, bearing some resemblance to the front end of the all-electric Mustang Mach-E. This Mondeo crossover prototype additionally wears a chrome strip that bridges both headlamps, and Autohome suggests this could make way for a full-width light strip across the front end sometime in the model’s future.

Further along, the image of the prototype’s rear door reveals that the fastback crossover will have flush-fitting door handles – for the rear doors at least – while the top features roof rails and a panoramic sunroof.

The accompanying image of the prototype’s interior also reveals a digital display panel that spans nearly the fully width of the dashboard, bookended by air-conditioning vents at both ends. No sign of this fastback crossover’s steering wheel, which hasn’t been fitted here, though the centre console appears to have a rotary transmission selector like the one on the 2020 Ford Explorer.

Little else is known about the forthcoming, newly-styled Mondeo (also known as the Fusion), though the fastback crossover has been tipped to employ a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, with a probable addition of a plug-in hybrid powertrain further down the line. For now, the forthcoming Mondeo is rumoured to arrive some time in 2021, pending the release of official details from the Blue Oval themselves.

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