Category: Superminis 
Price Range: No data available
Excellent interior space, practical, good safety features, good handling.
Most engines could do with more pep; hard seats, noisy diesel, excessive road noise on big wheels, one or two inconvenient features.
Sensible and fun to drive on the right road, but a bit dull; it also feels a little cheap and flimsy.
Superminis are so much bigger than they were, but this seems to matter little in practice.
There's excellent visibility through the deep front screen, it's easy to get a comfortable driving position (the seat is height-adjustable) and the major controls are crisp-acting and light. The high-mounted gearlever is very convenient and feels natural to use, and your confidence is further heightened by the Fiesta's agility and secure on-road feel. The minor controls are very clearly laid out and parking it is easy despite the small size of the rear window and the undersized mirrors. Many will find the small LCD fuel and temperature displays hard to read.
It's a reasonably entertaining car to drive: agile, responsive and very secure, it makes drivers feel confident whether they are enthusiastic or not. Those who aren't will appreciate its faithful handling, high levels of road-holding and general wieldiness, while the keener will enjoy its precision and the feedback they get through seat and wheel.
The adventurous will also find that they can trim the Fiesta's line through corners with the accelerator, but the degree to which the car tightens its line never gets out of hand. Keen drivers should note that the optional 15" wheels sharpen the handling and steering feel noticeably, with little deterioration in ride quality. The brakes are very effective (although the diesel's feel slightly numb).
The only downside is that its sporty nature tends to highlight the lack of go in the smaller engines.
Early on, Ford offered an eight-valve 1.3-litre engine, now discontinued: this is pleasant and well up to the job if you're not in a tearing hurry. However, for the same money (when new) you could have a more sophisticated and powerful 1.25, still on offer, which offers usefully better performance for no fuel-consumption penalty. At the bottom end of the range, this is the best buy.
The pricier 1.4 petrol is reasonably smooth and willing but, as with the smaller engines, the Fiesta's size and weight knock it back on hills, and revving it hard doesn't generate quite the go that you'd hope for. The 1.6, unsurprisingly, is better - it feels pretty brisk, pulls more convincingly at high revs and has enough low-rev urge to make progress pleasingly incisive - though it's still no hot hatch. For that, you'll have to opt for the 2.0-litre, 150bhp ST (reviewed separately).
If you're on a budget, the economical 1.4 diesel is a good choice - admittedly it doesn't quite have the solid grunt of some small turbodiesels, but it accelerates more convincingly than the petrol in most circumstances, and is fairly well mannered when cruising. However, it never stops sounding like a diesel when you're accelerating through the gears - which will be much of the time - and that can get wearing. The 1.6 is a little more enthusiastic, but neither are particularly inspiring. If you're after a hot-hatch feel in a diesel-engined supermini, the VW Group cars (Skoda Fabia vRS, Seat Ibiza Cupra diesel, the 130bhp VW Polo) do it better.
