The car whose name was determined to engender a sense of world-wide belonging has been dropped.

ALREADY pulled from New Zealand, now set to leave every other market.

So it goes for the Ford Mondeo, set to die in 2022 after 29 years with no replacement planned, the Blue Oval having determined to focus instead of sports utilities.

Ford NZ has confirmed its stock essentially ran out at the end of 2020. The car’s final representation here was in petrol EcoBoost and 2.0-litre turbodiesel hatch and wagon formats, with a petrol hybrid sedan also availed as a special order unit.

All those models will go out of production in Europe in March 2022, when the nameplate is also set to be retired for good.

Mondeo launched in 1993 and ran for five generations, with five million built. The nameplate was derived from Latin mundus, meaning ‘world’.

It was thought Ford was hatching plans to replace the Mondeo with a croosover style vehicle. That car is coming, but with a different nameplate.

 Blaming "changing customer preferences" for the decision, Ford Europe said it was “evolving our passenger vehicle range in Europe to meet changing customer needs as we move to an electric future”.