Ford Mondeo Vignale revealed – it’s back to the days of Ford Ghia

The Ford Moneo Vignale has been revealed as a study to preview a new luxury sub-brand for Ford models, just as Ghia once was.

Mainstream car makers have always tried to add some glitz and gloss to their models by tagging on a badge they thought made their cars more exclusive. Like Ford with endless ‘Ghia’ models sitting at the top of the Ford range after they bought Ghia of Turin in 1970.

Ford continued to use the Ghia badge to mark out its best-equipped models until very recently (you could still buy a Fiesta Ghia as recently as 2008) but they finally dropped the badge and moved their top of the tree badge over to the ‘Titanium’ moniker.

But Ford soon realised that more and more buyers were opting for the Titanium trim, so they bolted a Titanium X model on to their range, and only last month went a step further with a badge that denotes better than Titanium X with the new Ford Kuga Titanium X Sport.

But it seems Ford has even more grandiose plans for their range and have revealed the Ford Mondeo Vignale – another badge from a Turin Coachbuilders, bought up by De Tomaso when they were owned by Ford – to sit atop the Ford range.

The Ford Mondeo Vignale – which is heading for a debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show next month – sports a fancy new chrome grill (still in the shape of an Aston Martin grill – another Ford buy-in), new front bumper, leather everywhere, chrome abounding, wi-fi, Vignale badging and just about anything Ford can throw at it to make it seem more prestigious.

Ford are even promising a bespoke dealership service for Vignale buyers with a concierge-style service (does that mean they won’t constantly try to up-sell you add-ons at each minor service? No, didn’t think so) and will arrive as a bit of badge engineering when the new Ford Mondeo finally arrives in Europe and the UK in 2014/15.

Perhaps, instead of using yet another Turin Coachbuilder’s badge, Ford could have been faithful to its UK roots and gone for Ford TOWIE? After all, lots of shiny bits on top of everyday underpinnings seems to fit.