17 May 06
This lateral thinking challenged a number of conventional wisdoms in contemporary car design.
The Ka had unpainted bumpers and exposed painted metal surfaces in its cabin, usually signs of a cheaply built vehicle, but Ford made a virtue of this, flamboyantly incorporating such cost-cutting measures into the overall design.
'We wanted to make the Ka affordable, so unpainted bumpers were a compromise,' says Lobo. 'The Ka is a city car though and they often have bumps, so we made them easy to replace and very big to protect the Ka. This is why we made that famous shape, which reaches into the rear quarter panels and the front wings. They were one of the big styling cues of the vehicle.
'Most other vehicles of the time had square interior door panels made of vinyl or leather and wood. These rectangular panels are very difficult to fit and adjust during manufacturing - as soon as a rectangular panel isn't straight, you see it. So we decided to use round shapes, because it makes it very easy to assemble. You have nice painted panels surrounding this graphic, which gets rid of the problem of precision fitting."
Lobo later transferred internally to Ford in the US to oversee another project and the Ka was taken over by Chris Clements.
'At the time within the industry it was - and still is - notoriously difficult to make a car the size of the Fiesta profitable,' says Clements. 'The smaller you got, the more difficult it became and so we were eager to take on the challenge and offer something that the competition couldn't.
'Apart from basing it on the MkIV Fiesta platform, the trick was to restrict the powertrain offerings on the Ka, so that the crash zones would cover a single engine envelope and we could minimise both the overall length and the length of the front overhang. This would therefore make it an affordable and even profitable project.
'In order to keep it small and simple we imposed further rules on the project, which included that it should be a four-passenger vehicle only, and that it should only be offered in one trim level. We ended up with Ka2 and Ka3, but at the outset and during the development phase, we kept it a very simple proposition. This minimised the distractions and helped us focus on delivering the attributes that ultimately made the Ka a success.'
