MSPFusion

Mine is doing it too. We've had a lot of temps in the 90's here of late.

Richard - you either missed my point or you haven't spent much time in the German cars. Good luck specing a $35k BMW 3-series. The leather in my Fusion is definitely lower spec than the leather in a BMW or an Audi - ditto for the vinyl. Parts that are plastic in a Fusion, if they exist at all, such as cargo hold-downs, might very well be chromed steel in the German cars. The quality of the paint is higher, the quality of body panel alignment better and the list goes on. You're right, the luxury brands bring in much higher margins to the manufacturers. I wasn't claiming that the German cars are a better deal, quite the opposite. Bang for the buck the Fusion, to me, was a better value than an A4, by far. Be it with the Ford brand, Lincoln or Vignale, I think Ford has work to do on many of the basics if it wants to play in the "luxury" market.

MKII - as I expect you know, we have what will be the next generation Mondeo out in the US already, sold here as the 2013 Fusion. I have the fully-loaded Titanium version and while I love the car, I wouldn't put it on par with the A4 or 3-series BMW. Interior materials and build quality just are not to that level. The driving dynamics are quite good and given the reliability of my last car, an Audi, I am optimistic about Ford reliability. With more attention to detail and better interior materials Ford could close the gap substantially. In my opinion, it is much more car for the money, but it is not more car.

The value of this to Fusion owners in the US could be that some of the parts could become available via the Gray Market. The quilted leather seats don't do anything for me, but LED headlights, a steering wheel wrapped in a better grade of leather, a leather trim piece for the dash, perhaps some other parts, could be interesting little add-ons. Ultimately, I think this shows what a great value the Fusion is.

Don't expect to see the Vignale offered in the US - it would compete with Lincoln. For US Fusion owners the main point of interest will be the possibility of buying parts that are made for it. The leather dash cover, (plain black, not quilted!) better quality leather steering wheel and headlights are a few that come to mind. I agree with you TurboTi, I prefer the styling of the Titanium to the Vignale. To each their own, but I prefer the looks of the Fusion to the MKZ and I prefer the 2.0T to the 3.7 six cylinder. Every time you read a review of the MKZ they come to the same conclusion: the Fusion is a better buy and the 2.0T makes for a better engine. It weighs less and the car handles better. My Fusion replaced an Audi with a Twin-turbo six and I feel the 2.0T has the same performance, weighs less and it gets better fuel economy.

Ford will be selling an up-market version of the Mondeo (Fusion) in Europe called the " Vignale". There will be some interesting gray-market add-ons, potentially, once this and the Mondeo hit the market. Can't say I like the quilted leather seats, but some of the parts look pretty cool. http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/frankfurt-motor-show/ford-mondeo-vignale-spearheads-upscale-sub-brand

Mine does not stay in Surround mode, and I wish that it would. Topic perhaps worthy of its own thread, I have an Ipod Classic with 100 gb of content. It is constantly re-indexing it and rebuilding voice commands, even when I have not made any changes to the Ipod. Has anyone run into this and found a fix? Prior to my Ford my old car had a Pioneer Avic, based on the same Microsoft technology. With that system you could turn indexing on and off. When off, it used the old index and voice command file. The new voice command prompts are an improvement.

Cool, I didn't know there was an option to change the display at top center of the home screen. If you select date, that is all you can display, so its either date or time and temp. (Of course it displays time and outside temp on the display to the right of the steering wheel) Always more to learn.

Just did the update this morning. So far, I'm not noticing any major changes. The voice commands for navigation and use of my Ipod seem a bit improved. Outside temperature is displayed on the top of the home screen. Two changes that I would like to see are not included: - Have an option to display the date, time, or outside temp or some combination thereof on the home screen. There is plenty of room. - On the Nav Compass display to the right of the steering wheel (small screen) move the 8-ball compass to the left of the screen and enlarge the Speed Limit sign display to make it easier to read. I'm driving unfamiliar roads a lot these days and I really like that feature but I find the Speed Limit sign to be hard to read because the font size is so small. The current design would look great on a computer monitor, but in a car bouncing down the road, with the driver's hand in the 2 o'clock position it is not as easy to see as it could be. - Some of the screens could be streamlined and the Nav screen could be more intuitive. Performance is good, but I have never had any issues with slow screen updates. On the whole, I like the system but I think it can be improved to make it less distracting. I think we'll see more improvements and I think there will be a 4.0 version eventually.

Damn, wish I had known about the SRP for installation.

I bought the door sills on-line and got a discounted price, I got my sill plates from Levittown Ford for $147. Labor was about an hour and a half, which came in just under $200. With the labor it got pricey, but with a brand new car I didn't want to take any chances doing it myself. If you break a couple of plastic parts taking things apart the savings can diminish pretty fast.

Nice post GoPack, thanks for posting this. I had my illuminated sills installed by the dealer. They broke one of the clips on the overhead storage/lighting bin, but fixed it when I took the car back in. The illuminated sills are a nice feature.

Chris, Not sure if this will work for you, but my dealer advised that I needed to run the "Door Window Initialization Procedure". They had done this a few times and they had replaced the master switch, but my windows had, again, lost the "express up" capability for just the front windows. They sent me the procedure on a pdf, which I can't post here, but I'll copy it. The first two steps on the procedure warn about checking for objects in the path of the window. If you inadvertently start the procedure without finishing it, your windows will stop working properly. What I believe I was doing was checking the windows to make sure that they worked and without knowing it I activated the procedure. My guess is that I"m not the only person who has taken his car in for this. When I did this procedure, it fixed my problem: 1. Start the engine 2. Lift and hold the window control switch until the window is fully closed. 3. Release the window control switch. 4. Lift and hold the window control switch again for at least one second 5. Press and hold the window control switch until the door window is fully open. 6. Release the window control switch. 7. Lift and hold the window control switch until the window is fully closed. 8. Test for correct indow operation by carrying out the one-touch down and one-toch up features. Good luck! Steve

You might have better luck on a Ford Explorer forum. This is a Fusion forum, though I'd guess some of the people here own both.

If you're happy with what you have, I think that's great. I like MFT. I love my car. I'd just get rid of the touchpad and go with real buttons. I'm glad Ford is moving in that direction. Sure, it's not hard to figure out how to use the controls on MFT. The touchpad below the Nav screen on the TI Fusions is intuitive. But this isn't setting a very high standard. As an example, how long do you have to take your eyes off the road to activate your rear window defroster? With a button, you learn where it is and you can find it by feel, taking at most a split second glance at the panel. With the touchpad, you really have to look at the thing too see exactly which point you have to touch, you touch it and with no tactile feedback you have to keep looking at it to see if it is on. It takes your eyes off the road longer. Or you can argue with Thelma(my name for MFT) and get her to do it after a couple of tries. The Ipad is a great device. I love using mine. But as a UI in a car? No tactile feedback, too distracting. Bob Lutz just wrote a piece about this and I agree with his point of view. It's similar to what the aircraft industry experienced. They went to digital readouts and fewer mechanical switches and buttons. Now my understanding is that they have reversed course. Readouts are again analog-style. Mechanical buttons, knobs and switches are back. The tactile response and the speed with which an analog-style readout registers with a person is simply greater.