THE new Ford Mondeo has been out for just a few weeks, but topping a car magazine's honours list will quickly take it up to full showroom strength.

Auto Express magazine has named the Mondeo its overall champion of 2007, no mean achievement when you consider that testers appraised more than 1,100 cars over the course of the year, making it the UK's biggest such assessment programme.

The Ford Mondeo not only won the Car of the Year award, it also walked away with wins in the categories of best family car and best estate car.

Auto Express's tests cover a wide range of key buying criteria, including practicality, value for money, performance, handling and safety, and the magazine also gives every car tested a green rating for environmental impact.

Editor in chief, David Johns, said: "The Mondeo delivers effortlessly, performing with aplomb everywhere. It steers beautifully, rides with a composure and smoothness that's absent from even the best German executive cars, handles tautly, and has a great range of engines.

"It's also vast inside, beats its rivals for quality, is clearly laid out with great refinement and comfort levels, to take the sting out of everyday driving."

Land Rover netted two awards in the same New Car Honours 2007, beating tough competition to win Best 4x4 Recreational, and Best 4x4 Off-Roader.

The new Freelander 2 won the Recreational category, while the Discovery 3 beat the Mercedes M-Class and BMW X5 to the Off-Roader accolade.

Land Rover's managing director, Phil Popham, says: "We are absolutely delighted to win these awards, in a year where we will have a third successive sales record.

"Achieving the award for the Discovery 3 - a car that continues to be an outstanding success, consistently beating new entrants from other manufacturers - is a testament to its class-leading diesel engine, its versatility and its all-round package."

The Freelander 2, priced from £20,935, has already sold more than 8,000 units in the UK since going on sale. The best-seller Freelander 2 in the UK is the TD4 manual, which has a combined fuel economy figure of 37.7mpg. The Discovery 3 has sold more than 34,000 examples in Britain since its launch in 2004, and has collected almost 100 international awards to date.

In the Best Supermini MPV category, Auto Express named Nissan's Note the winner, and the win should augment the changes that Nissan has planned for the model range in September.

Note trim levels will change to mirror the Qashqai grade structure of Visia, Acenta, and Tekna, and prices at the September launch will run from £9,990.

Other major winners in the magazine's honours included the Vauxhall Corsa being named Best Supermini; the Honda Civic collected both the Best Compact Family Car and Best Hot Hatch (for the Type R) accolades, and the Citroen C4 Picasso was voted Best MPV.

And proving that after-sales service does pay off, Kia won an honour for its industry-leading seven-year warranty.

In the Auto Express product awards, the latest waterless Clean and Shine Wipes from car care leaders Armor All, won top car care product honour for 2007.