Highway usage

The C-segment sedan from Ford, the Fiesta, came to the Indian market a couple of years ago hoping to make a mark but somehow did not manage to entice the Indian buyer. Wanting to put together the pieces of the puzzle, we asked for the Fiesta to see how it feels over the long term. I decided to take onus of testing the Fiesta over long runs clocking 1,200km in the first week and then some more in the following week.

The car looks good from the front with its feline face- a blend of beauty and aggression. With solid lines defining the length of the car, I feel the designers lost out on the tail console. The interiors are well-crafted and presented. The car is ergonomically well-designed but getting to a real comfortable driving position takes repeated adjustments. The power window switches on the driver side are a little too far back for intuitive usage. The rear seats are rounded for lateral support and hence are comfortable for two, over long drives. The rear armrest is not that easy to pull out for the first time and requires a bit of strength. The infotainment system is easy to use for the basic functions like playing music, synchronising the phone via Bluetooth, but, is as complicated if you wanted to go below the surface and look for different vehicle settings. The quality of the company provided speakers is good and with the equaliser provisions, you could tweak the sound to somewhere near your liking.

The Ford Fiesta is a well-built car. The doors respond with a solid thud when slammed and even the bonnet and the boot-lid are heavy. We got a 14,000-odd km run media driven car and there was hardly any rattle or stray noise emanating from any corner of the car. The boot is a tad high to put in heavy luggage but is big enough to carry a week-long tour baggage and some extra stuff that you buy on the way. Even with four people in the car and a fair share of luggage, the car doesn’t squat but you have to be careful over speed humps.

What I liked the most about the Fiesta is the powertrain and the dynamics. The 1.5-litre TDCi engine churns out 89bhp at 3,750rpm and a meaty 204Nm torque from 2,000rpm. What this means is, you have enough power to do good speeds on open stretches while you also have the grunt to get off the blocks easily. In simpler terms, you need not downshift every time you want to overtake a car or longer vehicles for that matter. The turbo kick-in is seamless which also makes the drive comfortable and predictable. The gear ratios are fairly spread but for the second gear, which seems to be a bit tall for comfort. When you have to slow down for villages or junctions, and you do not slot into first thinking that it’s a diesel and should pull through, it is here that the probability of the engine stalling increases considerably.

The blue oval has always been known for its dynamic cars and this Fiesta carries forward the legacy. The steering is precise for turn-ins and weighs up well to paste a grin on any enthusiast’s face. The steering starts to lighten up a bit at speeds over three figures but does not become vague at any point of time. The suspension setup is on the softer side but it holds up well even through corners with elevation changes – good enough for something that is not built for spirited driving! The front dives under braking but it hardly affects the dynamics. The tires perform their duties well and squeal when your spirited driving becomes a tad overenthusiastic, but do not lose grip unless you go really overboard. The brakes are nice and progressive and the car does not get unsettled even under emergency braking.

On long drives, I personally prefer driving in the calm of the night, with least sundry traffic to scare you. The headlamps of the Fiesta lit up the roads pretty well in the dark tree-covered sections of the Western Ghats, however, I was left yearning for more on the highway where it becomes very difficult to see with the cut-outs and blinding halogens of other cars. The Fog-lamps did not make much difference on hazy hill-slopes either.

The Fiesta’s cooling is okay, though nowhere near the Figo. In the afternoon sun, the Automatic Climate Control struggles to effectively cool the occupants and neither does it let you have a quiet conversation while blowing at full power. That brings me to the wind and tyre noise. If you see the Fiesta, the body lines are flowing and aerodynamic and hence, the wind noise is minimal. The tyre noise is pretty evident right from 60-70 kmph though I would not attribute that to any design flaw as the road surfaces in India are never near the ideal. The clutch pedal was too hard – may be it was an issue with the car that we got.

The Fiesta returned a fuel efficiency of about 18.5 kmpl on the highway – good for a C-segment sedan. It is comfortable and handles well on highways as well as on pothole ridden roads. The build quality of the car, the fit and finish of the interiors are at par with the competition like Honda City or the Volkswagen Vento. It also does not score that badly in the styling department either, except for the boot. Overall, it is a good car to drive or be driven around in. Now that we have analysed almost all pieces of the puzzle it is time to put them together to find the solution.

After some pondering I feel the Fiesta does everything just well. It is like the Jack of all trades and that is what I guess is wrong with the car. The Honda City aces in class/quality, the Verna in styling, the Vento for build, the Scala for space. Sadly, in India these are the only parameters to judge the car. For where the Fiesta almost excels - the handling – is not aspired by the average Indian buyer and hence the Fiesta failed to make a mark in the market having lost on the aspirational quotient!

City usage

If I have to drive a sedan on the city roads – I will prefer the Fiesta over almost every other entry-level and midsized sedan. Of course it has its own drawbacks, but the advantages are a lot more. It is compact without compromising on the boot space – the bonnet isn’t too long either and that means making most of the tiniest overtaking opportunities is very easy. Although the rear bench would generally be empty during city drives and people who occasionally did use them never complaint about lack of space during those short stints.

The all-black interiors are bit of an issue, especially now that we can’t have sun films. We believe in saving fuel and so ideally switch-off cars at traffic signals, but in the Fiesta the cabin heats-up very quickly (Mumbai weather should also be blamed for this). The cooling has been one grey area for our Fiesta, even during long drives the team kept complaining about cooling.

A diesel is not the car that you should buy purely for driving around in the cities – the distance covered won’t be enough to cover up for the additional amount paid to buy an oil burner. Then again the Fiesta has few more drawbacks in traffic conditions – the clutch is a little too hard and our knees would start hurting if we drove for anything more than an hour in bumper to bumper traffic. The second gear is too tall and that means if you shift from first gear without building revs the car will bog down. Also it is not easy to keep driving in the second gear in traffic; everyone in the team has managed to stall the car at least once. Had this been the power-shift petrol automatic, I am sure the daily commuted would have been really enjoyable.

We never had any issues with the efficiency, the Fiesta easily returned between 13.5kpl to 14kpl in city despite primetime travel.

The only other thing that we will want to complain about in the Fiesta is the horn cover, it offers too much resistance tiring my thumb within minutes. The voice commands work – well most of the time and the mike is ergonomically placed so you don’t have to shout when the phone is synced with the audio system.

In size, the Fiesta is a perfect sedan for city use, however it is the petrol that is the more logical option