Europe may be one of the saloon’s last bastions, but 2022 saw the death of the Ford Mondeo, with no replacement going on sale on the continent. It's part of a wider decline of the Ford saloon, once a bedrock of its range, offering the likes of the much-loved, and much-aspired to, Granada (pictured), as well as the Sierra and Cortina, the Mondeo's predecessors. With the recent demise of the Fiesta, and the Focus too soon enough, soon the only model that Ford sells in Europe that isn't an SUV will be the Mustang.

In America, Ford announced plans to eliminate saloons, estates, MPVs, and hatchbacks in 2018. Production of its last US market saloon, the Fusion, ended in August 2020 in Hermosillo, Mexico.

Ford’s decision represents a stunning about-face because its saloons regularly appeared on the list of its best-sellers for decades. Times change, markets evolve and the unthinkable sometimes becomes inevitable. Ford of Australia unknowingly blazed this path; it canned the rear-wheel-drive Falcon in 2016 and hasn’t looked back. Join us for a look at the rise and fall of the Ford saloon car, and some of its other related models and other shapes that aren't SUVs: