Blackraven

Ford Fiesta: Ford is on a roll here

IS-SV

Nice preview. When I have time I might take a test drive.

Exterior styling is always a challenge with a car this small, but sure seems like Ford did an above average job (realizing how subjective styling is of course).

mmarshall

Thanks.


If you do, of course, give us your opinion of its road manners. Your part of the country, CA, probably (?) has more of them right now to choose from than we do....CA, especially SoCal, often gets new models first.

I would have driven that black sedan, but for two reasons. First, I didn't think (and still don't, despite that young girl's obvious interest in it) that the majority of buyers will want the sedan....I'm waiting for the hatchback. Second, she had all but signed for it there, and I didn't want anything to happen to it on the road.

-J-P-L-

Pricing if anyone's curious...

$13,995 for the base sedan

$15,795 for base hatch (odd that the hatch starts at $1,800 more)

$16,995 for SEL sedan (more for options)

$17,795 for SES hatch (more for options)

I'm still curious why they are pricing the hatch as the premium option - $1,800 more doesn't seem justified base for base. Traditionally, the sedan option of a model has been the "step up". Heck, it's a bigger car.

For the competitors, Yaris, Accent, Aveo, ect., the hatch costs less.

Also, why is Ford omitting the 3 door hatch/coupe from the US lineup?? That's lost sales. Toyota initially made the opposite mistake of not offering the Yaris 5-door option in the states, then after 2 years, decided to launch it here. Toyota lost a lot of sales by people not interested in sedans but still needing 4 doors. So they bought Fit's, Versa's, ect. The 3-door and 5-door sell similarly now. When the car is already offered elsewhere, there's no reason for a company to lose sales and not offer all body styles especially in their home country. I've read many posts/reviews in other forums stating that a sale of a certain model was lost because the buyer wanted either a 3-door hatch when only a 5 was available or vice-versa. A total switch from one brand to another was made.
As a company, it's the last thing you want.

Here's the 3-door....

mmarshall

Ford's American-market website (and the Fiesta brochure/literature) also includes the mid-range SE sedan/hatchback models, not just base S and top-line SEL/SES models.

Here are all the current prices:

http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/fiesta/models/


You'll see, on the website, that there is no S base-model hatchback...only upmarket SE and SES versions. Ford, as you note, chose to make the base S models only sedans. I don't totally see why, either.....but I suspect that Ford knows the hatch models will be more popular, even in the U.S., hence they may (?) want to profiteer on them a little more.



I totally agree with you on this one. Sometimes the actions of auto marketers are not only absurd, but totally unexplainable. Let's see, though, in the meantime, how well the 5-door hatchback sells.

mmarshall

I did the full-review on the SE hatchback today, and am writing it up (it takes me a number of hours, of course, to do a full-review). I'll have it finished and posted for you guys either late tonight (East-Coast time) or sometime tomorrow.