How To Make Siri Work With Your Ford Sony DAB Radio

Are you:

• The owner of a reasonably modern Ford car with a Sony DAB radio in it?
• The owner of a reasonable modern iPhone?
• Strangely fascinated with getting your phone to do stuff by talking at it, despite it taking much longer (and being way more error-prone) than actually tippety-tapping your way around the user interface?
• Pissed that you can’t make your aforementioned iPhone do the aforementioned Siri stuff in your aforementioned car whilst hooked up via Bluetooth?

If you’ve answered yes to all of the above questions, then help is at hand. Here’s how to access Siri via Bluetooth in your Ford car:

1. Hit the ‘Voice Control’ button.
2. Say ‘Mobile name’.
3. Wait for the Siri beepy noise.
4. Say what you want at Siri.
5. Sit back and be amazed – amazed, I tell you – as Siri splutters into life, misunderstands what you asked for and, instead of calling your Mum, plays your Celine Dion collection[^1] at full volume on repeat.

The only restrictions I’ve found with this is that it doesn’t do a good job of switching to the Bluetooth device input if you’ve asked it to play music – you still have to manually select that via the head unit buttons (or by using voice control to change input). However, it does work rather well for making phone calls.

Now if only Ford had a decent aftermarket solution to retrofit a CarPlay compatible head unit, I’d be happier than a pig in poop.