The summer of 2003 broke all temperature records in England and I spent it working in that little metal box pictured below. We were rebuilding a power plant just outside of London, putting in 14-16 hour days, 7 days a week. It was a truly miserable experience, save for one ritualistic part of each day.
At the conclusion of the shift, we would all congregate in our rental cars and proceed to rally to the hotel. During these rips through suburban England, my rental Focus opened my eyes to the potential, quality, and performance of a Ford vehicle. I have finally had the same experience on US soil.
This is the 1000 mile review of the Ford Fiesta
I am part of the "if America ever built a decent car for me, I would buy it" crowd. Straight line speed without cornering ability is worthless to me. I like to drive, to shift, and most importantly to turn. I have put the Fiesta through the paces now and it performs exceedingly well in all these aspects. Honestly, I really wanted to find some serious faults to establish my objectivity out of the gates. And while there are things I would change and aspects that don't fully work with my driving style (more on this), overall this car lands on the bull's eye.
A few days ago, I thrashed it over Middlebury Gap in VT, going east to west with no other cars in sight and Dead Unicorn on the speakers. This is one of my favorite drives to check a car out in a variety of conditions. The Fiesta really shines in corners, feeling more stable the higher the speed. One of my core gripes with American cars has been soft suspensions and loose steering. Neither is evident in this car, it is such a tight package in the twists. Despite being a smaller vehicle, the 1.6L 119 HP engine provides plenty of pop to pull out of corners and set you back in your seat.
Last night, I let a few auto fanatics give the ole Fiesta a spin. FerrariSteve and AudioDave (I made the second nickname up) are both REAL car guys and know their stuff (click Ferrari Steve's name to find out more). The Fiesta received universal thumbs up from both, reiterating what I stated earlier. FerrariSteve's only complaint was around the color of the control panel section of the dash. AudioDave shared my shock that there are drums on the rear and that the E Brake seems a bit, um, lacking. We both understand the reasoning but would really like to see discs. Seriously that was it.
I have discussed the field of competition that the Fiesta plays in with a few folks and all agree that it is a shame to consider the Fit or Yaris a real competitor. The only peer in the pack has to be the Mini Cooper due to the attention to detail and the level of performance.
When you sit in the car, you are really struck by the quality and intelligence of the interior. From the material and stitching of the seats to the soft touch of the dash, this does NOT feel like a low cost car. You add in all the bells and whistles and end up with an amazing package that meets your needs without compromising your wants.
After 1000 miles of driving, I am pleased by how functional the amenities are. I do not like "extra" stuff that really has no useful purpose, I guess that is the engineer in me. The Fiesta has some of this but for the most part it is spot on. I love the fact that the outside temperature (albeit in Celsius in mine) is prominently and permanently shown. The lights are really really solid and the ability to adjust the height through a wide sweep is absolutely awesome. While rallying up hills, I love to be able to slightly tilt my lights down.
There is a rear foglight, which is essentially a brighter taillight to warn any followers of your presence in soupy conditions. I have found this particularly useful for getting people to stop tailgating me. I just erratically turn it on and off until the person backs off. An added benefit is that I laugh every EVERY time.
The last 6 months have been hard on everyone. There was a time when it seemed like a new person called me every week looking for a job, having been laid off. This brings me to what may be my favorite thing about this car. I have always had a lingering feeling of guilt for driving foreign cars. My family is from Michigan and it was considered sin to stray from the locals. When I am behind the wheel of the Fiesta and I look down at the emblem, I feel a certain amount of pride and pleasure knowing that I won't have to compromise my driving style to buy American. A bit silly and cliche, I know, but I feel it nonetheless and it feels good.
Now this is not a perfect car and in fact there may not exist such a thing. Most of my issues are based on personal preferences but for the sake of objectivity here they are.
1. Drum brakes in the rear, seems like a car of this quality should get discs. That said, no issue with stopping. I had to hammer them on the highway to avoid hitting a gray wolf and yes I am sticking to that story.
2. Adjustment of the seat. The special lady friend submits this one because it took her forever to crank the seat back to catch some snores. I like the dialed in feel and think that both worlds could be appease with a release mechanism on the current set-up.
3. Fuel gauge location. The fuel gauge is located at the very bottom of the dash. When I am laid back with my mind on my money, my view is obscured by the steering wheel. I defend nearly running out of gas on this fact.
4. Engine temperature gauge MIA. I know 95% of the driving public doesn't realize they even have a temperature gauge but I like it. It helps me stay on top of engine performance and dial in my MPG and I miss it in the Fiesta.
5. Center console design. Now to be fair the area around the e-brake is infinitely better than most cars. However, given the efforts to integrate MP3/iphones/gameboys into the car in this location, it would nice to have a better place to place them. I am still searching for the ideal place to put my iphone while it is charging. This may seem a bit silly, but it sucks to have the phone go flying on a corner or clunk around in a ill sized recession. It would be awesome to have a place where the phone is held and protected and the cords are hidden.
6. MPG. We are being completely transparent with our MPG and you will see that it is currently 28.6. I was expecting to get much better and have been a bit perplexed by this low of an average. Truth be told, I have been driving the car about as poorly as you can for optimizing MPG. I will be slowly changing to hypermiling over the next 6 months to see the full spectrum of MPG. However, I had hoped to see closer to 32 MPG under hard driving. More to come.
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How in the heck are you able to adjust your driving such that it alters the engine temperature? And from there, how do you know how the engine temperature (H2O temp typically) relates to better or worse mileage? I think you're making that stuff up.
The variations in fuel mileage is just amazing. It's unbelievable that you're getting only 36-37mpg in a car I'm guessing weighs somewhere around 2500 lbs. The wife's 2003 9-3 with the base 2.0L turbo easily pulls 32+ at 80mph with snow tires. Hopefully there's some optimization that is done to the final US product (ECU, tires, etc) because you should be doing better than the 31-33 average listed on fuelly.
Then again - maybe the motor just needs some more breaking in.
Just looked up some rough numbers
2003 9-3 3200-3300 lbs.
2010 Fiesta 5-door 2200 lbs
With regard to mpg in the US vs. UK. Remember a couple of things are different. Firstly, the octane of petrol in the UK is usually 95 RON(standard) or 98 RON(premium), with 99 RON on offer at Tesco, while in the US it usually ranges from 87 AKI to 91 AKI. A very rough guide is to add 4 or 5 points to the AKI figure to get the RON... so the US gasoline in European units is roughly 92 RON to 96 RON.
Lower octane values can reduce performance and economy in performance engines (particularly those with a turbo), causing the engine management system to retard ignition timing. Having said that, economy figures will come down to how well car engines have been set up to handle the fuel sold in respective countries. What one cannot do is get the best performance possible from a high performance motor using low octane fuel... because a high performance engine will not be able to run at the high compression rate it was designed for.
So there may be something in that difference to explain mpg variation on either side of the Atlantic. Now for the big one:
The size of a gallon in the US vs. the UK.
US gallon = 3.785 litres
UK (imperial) gallon = 4.546 litres
So an Imperial gallon is 20% bigger than a US gallon. Either add 20% to the US figures to compare or everyone decide to go metric! The problem with metric is those that use it quote:
litres per 100km &
km per litre
So converting other country's stats is going to continue for some time.
All great comments, glad to see this post getting some attention and sparking some conversation.
My question is, why get rid of the British woman for the American car? I'd much rather have Moneypenny talking to me than the woman I hear when I call my voicemail. ;)
Cheers,
N
Seth - Love the "WOW, it's a Ford!" comment. We've only had a few people on the road scope ours out, mostly those who are in other B-segment autos. They are most likely to notice the Fiesta, I think. Other than that, we've had quite a few car buffs hovering around. Being near Detroit, that's what you'd expect. Last night a prototype photographer snapped a few pics of it and wants to set up a time to take more. Our favorite response so far is, "This car isn't supposed to be here... How did you get one?!" They just can't believe Ford is letting us everyday Joe's review the car.
Great review, too.
Alan - what is that iPhone holder called? Would love to get one.
Hi Mandy,
Thanks for the props and the visit to our site. You know I was getting a bit irritated that I wasn't getting more attention over the car. In Vermont, no one even glances at it, but then most people here are blinded to anything that isn't a Prius or Subaru. As soon as I rolled the green beauty into New Hampshire, people started emerging from the woodwork. Given the black and pink arrows, I was expecting some rough comments, but people were universally impressed and really stoked on the idea. I could use those biz cards Mission Control spoke of.
I would like to know where Alan got his iPhone holder as well, I have reached my limit with the constant clanking around.
As a FYI, I think I am going to be in Detroit during the last week of May for work. I think I am going to have to fly for that trip, but we will see.
Seth
I have a rubber case on my iPhone so there is no clanking. Over the weekend I just kind of stuck it upside down in the section with the USB and it stayed put. So maybe I won't need to spend the dough on the iPhone holder after all. Did you see in the forum that if you use your dedicated iPhone USB cable in conjunction with an audio cable that it will sync your info on the dash? I'm going to have to try that this week.
Let us know if you're in Detroit!
Seth,
When you are back home, I will bring the Mini down, and we can trade for a ride. Try some immediate compariosn - I just took the snows off , so can try some tight corners.
I am very curious, reading this review as I too am the "would buy American if they would make something worthwhile" - I like the Mini's solid feel, like an MGB vs. Spitfire (for an esoteric comparison).
Please do reiterate to Mission Control => Don't change good Euro specs. to what you think Americans want, let Americans in on what good design is. i.e. why do we need bigger cups holders ??
Keep it up, and will look foward to driving comments from the "Special Lady Friend" - as you know my Mini has been comandeered by my better half -
LHM
Lawrence,
It is a deal, looking like June is going to be my first extended stint in Vermont. I will be interested in the direct comparison to a Mini as well. My buddy Vin, a car guru, was very surprised that the suspension was stock. He was convinced that it was sport tuned.
I set the mobile office up yesterday, which really means I got an inverter to power the laptop. This was really the only thing that was going to pry the steering wheel out of my hands and let the special lady friend get some extended time behind the wheel. We are still thinking through the best set-up for cross country fiestavating. It turns out highway rest stops don't lend themselves to the macrobiotic diet very well.
Hi Seth - liked the review, very detailed, glad you are impressed with it. Fiestas a massive sales hit over this side of the pond. How do you think the reception will be to it when its launched for real - will it be embraced in America or will it be seen as too small?
On your issues:
As you are driving the Euro spec midel, theres a chance the centre console may be altered for the larger cup holders in NA, so they might do something for a phone holder if you feed that back to Ford. Also other agents are reporting around 30-40 mpg which is what I'd expect, so either you are driving a bit heavy on the accelerator or there may be a minor fault with the car that needs adjusting. Would be worth contacting your Fiesta Movement rep.
Enjoy the next 6 months.
Anthony,
Thank you for the response. The reception by America is an interesting question. In the past two days, I have personally witnessed 3 people go from hardcore skeptics to very interested. They all were amazed at how large the car actually is. I think many other cars have primed the market such as the Mazda 3, the Mini, and the Matrix. I will be exploring the size of the Fiesta in much greater depth in my next few blog posts.
RE MPG: I have been putting the Fiesta through the paces and most of my travels have been on mountain passes. I definitely would expect it to be lower than the norm, it just seems low. I will certainly inquire with the Movement to ensure the car is running properly.
Hi again Seth. I've checked the official UK fuel consumption figures for your model, and taking off 10% for 'real world' driving, the worst should be 240 miles on a full tank (not running down to the red line, so around 8 gallons) which works out at 30mpg. The official max is twice that! Agent Cassie D. has posted a video where she has refuelled after 230 miles (and it already had 75 on the clock), and her consumption could be better as she has never driven manual before. Really do think you should get it checked out (the other thing it could be is that the mpg is fine but the display is incorrectly calibrated).
Be very interesting on whether the public views of it change based on your agents blogs etc. The only negatives I've seen so far is a bit of trouble with the voice activation (on the US version it won't have the British woman) and one other agents issue with the fuel.
Have any of your friiends had a drive in it? What do they thiink?
Hi Anthony,
Oddly enough, I am starting to think part of my MPG issue is a result of friends driving the car. Yesterday I got my first tank of regular driving with no others involved and had 36.7. It seems that people like to run through the gears at high revs when they first get into the car. I am shooting mission control an email regardless and appreciate your follow-up.
Everyone has been very impressed thus for with the performance and these have been some real car enthusiasts with pre-conceived ideas about American cars. The two questions that come up are whether the American version will be that much different and how the car will hold-up. I should be able to prove the second in the next few months.
My favorite occurrence thus far happened on Saturday. My sister had just hopped behind the wheel for a spin and this couple rolls by in a newer VW Bug. The lady in the passenger seat is staring continously at the car and as they drive past the front you could see her say, "WOW, it's a Ford!"
Hi Seth, thanks for the response.
Glad the mileage issue is probably sorted out.
To answer your first question, if you read all the blurb publish over here, it seems Ford intend to do very little to the Euro spec other than to build it locally and make it conform to US safety regulations (larger front bumper and such like). The main spec difference from the website will be you will get Sync as an option and an Auto transmission. The rest will be pretty much identical.
In this photoset you can see what I used to get the iPhone out from sitting in the cup holder of the Fiesta:
http://tinyurl.com/cxr5w7
However...I'd prefer they did have something dedicated.
Alan,
Thanks on the head's up, that looks like a decent interim solution. btw I may revival your loading shortly.