9 Things I Learned After Driving The New Ford Fiesta

The Ford Fiesta is massively significant in its insignificance. It’s not likely to be in many people’s dream three-car garages, but it’s Europe’s best-selling car. It’s the car countless people learned to drive in, it has been millions of people’s first car, millions of families’ second car and has been pretty much inescapable for 40 years. It’s not the car you put on your bedroom wall, but it is the car you actually buy.

A new one is always a big deal, then, despite the fact that it’s not a Pagani and doesn’t have all the cylinders. This one is nearly all new, from its neat and compact nose to its pert bumcheeks. Just the downsized list of engines are carried over from the old car, but the game has changed a little. Let us explain…

It’s bigger and more grown-up than ever

Stability was clearly a buzzword in the car’s development. The 2018 Fiesta is 13mm wider than before, but the rear track has been widened by 10mm and the front by a pretty massive 30mm. That’s designed to keep it flatter through corners, but also to make it feel less like a small car. It works, giving it a more mature, less excitable feel, and it takes a reasonable amount of commitment to beat some body roll out of the stiffer models. On Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres, the grip levels are insane.

As for length, it’s a theoretically useful and significant 71mm longer than the last one, but it only gets a minuscule two-litre slice of extra boot space and the tailgate still shuts with a tinny ping. Rear passengers only see an extra 16mm of space at the knees. Every little helps, but the extra length is mostly given over to aesthetics. Bigger looks more premium, says Ford, and whether they’re right or not, there’s no arguing that it’s a pretty little thing from most angles.

Tech fiends can enjoy a gadget feast

It’s unprecedented to see this much technology – advanced stuff, too – on such a small car. Starting at the more usual end of things, the new, central touch-screen is yours in sizes up to eight inches and the centre console has (praise the Lord) been simplified. Most of the functions have migrated like winter geese to the warmer climes of the infotainment unit. Heating and air movement, plus the extra heated gadgets, stay in a conventional button-style layout beneath the air vent ‘smiley’.

If you so wish, and if your pockets are overflowing with crisp banknotes, you can spec your Fiesta with goodies like automatic parking, rear cross-traffic detection, adaptive cruise control, a reversing camera, lane-keeping assist and a punchy 675-Watt Bang & Olufsen surround sound stereo that’s good enough for most people. There’s much more, besides. For those of us who still hold a torch for CDs, a single-disc player is an optional extra and goes, impractically, in the glove box.

Older buyers are a bigger target

A chat with Seamus McDermott, Product Launch Manager for the Fiesta, revealed that the 2018 car is sending a big chunk of its attention towards older buyers. The aim is to tempt people away from Vauxhall Astras, Volkswagen Golfs and Peugeot 308s with a package that offers all the functionality they need, the advanced technology they (may) want and the grown-up driving dynamics they expect, all with enough spare change left over to let them sit on a Spanish beach for a month drinking sangria.

The flagship Fiesta Vignale; the smallest Vignale model to date (and pictured above), is at the pointy end of this new business model. Depending on engine choice you can expect to pay around £20,000 plus options, which is a mighty amount for a supermini but looks damn good value against an equivalently-furnished car from the class up.

Interior design and quality have taken a giant leap

Keep your eyes to the front and it’s all good in the higher-grade Fiestas like the Vignale and ST-Line, with thicker soft-touch surfaces and a really neatly designed console beneath the tablet-style screen. Titanium spec, once Ford’s bastion of everything shiny and luxurious, is now an upper-mid-range option that feels a step down from the two others at the launch event. The door trim isn’t great in any of them, though, with low-rent panels an obvious cost-cutter. We’re yet to get touchy-feely with a more basic Style or Zetec model.

The best engines remain, with a surprise newcomer

Ford has slimmed the old, bloated engine range down to just the EcoBoost turbocharged 1.0-litre petrol, in three states of tune, and a 1.5-litre diesel that comes in two outputs. There’s also a terrifyingly slow 1.1 at the bottom of the range, but let’s not speak of such things (unless your insurance company insists). The three-pot petrols are smoother than you’d think but need some time to loosen up; a well run-in 138bhp Fiesta should feel a bit feistier than our test chariot did.

A new 118bhp diesel is an unexpected treat. It has enough going on in the trouser department to get up to motorway speeds quickly enough, and it’ll even pull past that without complaining. It’s pretty quiet, for another thing, and its gearbox is desperately sweet; even more so than the one hooked to the EcoBoost.

The fast steering is still there but the spark has dimmed

Fast steering is a Fiesta family trait, giving it lightning turn-in reflexes and that distant hint of go-kart spice. With its wider front track, though, the nippy little Ford doesn’t quite feel alive in the same way it used to; it lacks something of the tip-toe poise of old. What’s more, there’s almost no slack at the straight-ahead and the steering wheel is frequently busy as a result, the electronically-managed rack regularly nibbling at your grip like a hungry mouse at a wheel of cheese.

The balance of attributes has shifted. It’s still wonderfully capable through S-bends but the onus is on grip and stability rather than outright engagement. If you’re switching from an older car from the class up, it’ll feel like the best of both worlds. If it’s giggles you’re after, better wait for the full-fat ST.

The ST-Line isn’t just a styling exercise

The closest you can get to the ST at launch is the ST-Line, which, thankfully, isn’t just a styling exercise. The engineers have fettled all the tunable components throughout the chassis, so there are firmer springs and matching dampers beneath a 10mm lower ride height, the rear torsion beam is stiffer and the rear anti-roll bar has been beefed up. Several components are almost uprated to the level of the old ST, in fact.

It’s not just mechanicals, either. The stability control in ST-Line models theoretically allows for more movement, especially at the rear, but in practice it’s that hard to unstick the little Ford from its line that a freer ESC tune is made kind of redundant.

It’s harder than you expect at low speed

You know those vicious little speed bumps you sometimes get on private roads? Those nasty little black and yellow ones? None of the three Fiesta models we tested had any meaningful give whatsoever over those, even on 16-inch wheels. The optional 18s are probably best avoided. At low speeds the car tends to feel over-damped on the compression side, thumping over sharp bumps and jarring through potholes.

But it flows beautifully at high speed

On the other hand, it’s super-planted at speed. The suspension does a sterling job of riding the road’s lumps and bumps once you’re flying along, giving it an enviable flow on the smooth Spanish Tarmac. Up at 100mph it’s stable and composed, and even fast left-right switchbacks and the awkward transfers of weight over crests don’t unsettle it. Whether the great high-speed ride and compromised low-speed comfort are the right way around will be up to you, and the way you use it.