Ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi Titanium Three-Door
by David Finlay (16 February 2009)
The new Fiesta, the seventh model to bear that name since it was introduced in the mid-1970s, has picked up enough awards to warm the cockles of Steven Spielberg's heart. To take a few examples, it has been given the overall What Car? and Scottish titles, and only narrowly lost out to the Vauxhall Insignia - 320 points to 321 - in the International Car of the Year stakes.
Being a cantankerous sort of fellow, I'm finding it difficult to resist the temptation to say, "No! The Emperor has no clothes!" or some such thing, simply to provide an alternative viewpoint (or, if I'm honest, to cause an argument). But the fact is that, at the very least, no manufacturer has recently come up with a small hatchback which is significantly better than the Fiesta, which is rightly being used as a point of comparison for everything else in the sector.
It is, I strongly believe, the best Fiesta yet. It has a feeling of quality that you wouldn't have believed possible in a small Ford ten years ago, and in general it has a level of comfort which suggests it's much larger than it really is. There is an awful lot to be said for this car.
But there's quite a lot to be said against it too. How effective can Ford's new design language be when one person I spoke to regards this as the ugliest Fiesta ever (not true - the Mk4 introduced in 1996 was much worse) and another mistook the test car at first glance for a Peugeot 207? Why is there such disappointingly limited room for rear passengers? And who on earth, during the development process, looked at the tiny rear windows, failed to notice the disastrous lack of rear visibility, and said, "Yes, excellent, we'll put it into production like that"? Nobody who imagined trying to manoeuvre in a supermarket car park, I'll bet.
Not that I personally spent all my time in car parks, you understand. In fact I drove the test car for more than 1000 miles within two days, a statistic which caused even Ford's PR people to take sharp intakes of breath, as if none of them would consider doing such a thing.
But it was easy enough, partly because the noise from the 1.6-litre turbo diesel engine is very well suppressed, and partly because the splendid seats in this top-level Titanium model, which I at first thought were not quite right for someone over six feet tall, actually turned out to be very supportive on a long motorway run.
The level of comfort could be better, though, for two reasons. First, the test car had 16" wheels with fairly low-profile tyres, and that's not the best idea for the Fiesta - models with 14" wheels and higher-sidewall tyres (such as the ECOnetic, which I happened to drive during my time with this one) may not look as good, but they ride a lot better.
But not ideally, because of the second reason, which is that the Fiesta seems to have been set-up with smooth German roads in mind, and it's just not prepared for the kind of tarmac we have to deal with in the UK. Even motorway driving is a more jiggly process than it needs to be.
Ironically, and as mentioned in our launch report, the Fiesta becomes better to drive the faster you go. If you're really thrashing it, it handles absolutely brilliantly - not like a race car, exactly, but in a way that suggests you wouldn't have to do much to it if you wanted to turn it into a race car. But how many buyers are going to want it to behave like that? A tamer driving experience with a smoother ride would be a much better compromise than the one Ford has presented us with.
There are seven trim levels in the Fiesta line-up, and Ford expects Zetec to be the most popular. The Titanium version tested here is only for those who don't mind paying big money for a small car. The list price is nearly £14,000 (more than that if you for the five-door), but that's what you have to pay if you want those 16" alloys (which believe me you don't) along with Electronic Temperature Control, privacy glass, cruise control, automatic headlights and wipers, folding door mirrors and carpet mats. All very nice, but personally I'd save a few bucks and look further down the range.
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