Category: Superminis 
Price Range: £11,295 to £15,945
Fun to drive; cheap to buy and run; comfortable and refined; good engines; sharper design.
Rear-seat space not great; no flat-folding/tumbling/sliding rear seats.
The Fiesta is back at the party; a super new supermini that would merit the full five stars if had had a little more load-space versatility.
The Ford Fiesta is generally well screwed together, and while this one has a lot of new electronic aids, communications devices and gadgets, none of the tech is all-new to the Ford range. Much of the underpinnings and structural components have already been tried and tested in the closely-related Mazda 2 - or in the latest Focus - and we'd be confident about ongoing reliability. It's built for Europe in Cologne and Valencia, both factories having a good track record.
It's clearly a car developed to a price - cheap touches out of direct eye-line include the hard-plastic central console between the front seats, and the bare-metal rear seat-backs - but the cabin is nicely designed, with some pleasant soft-touch surfaces and decent upholstery. It all looks finished with good attention to detail, too, with impressive touches including multi-layered seals around the windows and doors, and no obvious loose plastic, ragged-edged fabric or wobbly bits.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Ford Fiesta
wrote on 22 11 2008