17 May 06
These days, it is unusual for a mainstream car to reach 10 years in series production without any major changes to its design. But the Ford Ka - appropriately named after the Egyptian term for 'vital force of life' - has managed to stay abreast of Europe's increasingly stringent emissions and safety legislation, while still looking remarkably fresh.
Rewind to 1996, however, and the car-buying public didn't really know what to make of the radical Ka. Initially, Ford's new baby didn't sell strongly and for a while, it looked as if the company's first major design gamble since the Sierra might not come off - which would have boded very badly for the even more radical Focus, on its way to replace the aged Escort.
Remember, this was a time when the UK's city car market was defined by a couple of fossilised BL products - the Mini and the Metro - with other contenders, including Fiat's unusually conservative Cinquecento and the 1995 Nissan Micra, which looked like it had driven straight off the pages of a Mr Men book.
Back then, small cars were primarily about being cheap. This was before the world got Smart and long before the fashion-conscious adopted the (BMW) Mini as their runaround of choice. In mid-90s Britain, the only way to make an individual statement with a small, fun car was to put up with the inconvenience of left-hand drive and import a Renault Twingo.
Then came the Ka, the car many saw as the true modern-day Volkswagen Beetle: very affordable and practical, full of character and utterly unique.
