Archive special: How the Ford Fiesta was born

The last Fiesta leaves Ford’s mill successful Cologne today, ending astir fractional a period of production.

The Ford Fiesta’s origins tin beryllium traced backmost further than you whitethorn expect. Ford had ne'er contested Europe’s ‘mini’ car marketplace before, choosing successful 1958 to travel the Anglia with different household car – the Cortina – successful the close content that it would beryllium a greater fiscal success. A content solidified by a thorough teardown of Austin’s caller Mini successful 1959.

However, arsenic the Mini became a immense occurrence and gained fashionable rivals successful the Hillman Imp and Fiat 127, Ford felt it should deliberation again.

This spawned a mock-up that successful 1970 gained reserved support from management, aft which the endeavour divided into respective strands successful Ford’s planetary empire.

End of an era: The Ford Fiesta story

The champion of these was that of plan location Ghia successful Italy, which showed the packaging advantages of front-wheel thrust (FWD), and soon after, successful September 1972, Dearborn gave the Europeans $1 cardinal for ‘Project Bobcat’ – adjacent though brag Henry Ford II was seemingly inactive of the ‘small cars marque tiny profits’ mindset. (This, by the way, each proves that the Fiesta was not, arsenic is sometimes said, a kid of the 1973 lipid crisis.)

Realising the captious value of giving precisely what radical wanted, Ford anonymously conducted 1 of the astir costly marketplace probe projects to date, flying randomly chosen drivers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain to spot respective mock-ups.

This revealed that the Fiesta was the perfect size for each nations and FWD was powerfully preferred. Further clinics successful 1973 revealed that the car should beryllium a hatchback, arsenic these accelerated gained favour for their other practicality implicit saloons.

Work done successful San Francisco besides suggested that Americans liked the car capable to warrant US sales, a corollary of which was accumulation being extended (beyond Cologne, Saarlouis and a purpose-built caller mill successful Valencia) to Dagenham.

Predicting that vigor anxiety, ostentation and stagnant standards of surviving would nonstop mini cars’ marketplace stock arsenic precocious arsenic 30%, Ford had sought to marque the Fiesta arsenic affordable arsenic imaginable successful presumption of purchase, moving and repair – but vitally a ‘proper car’ scaled down, not a spartan econobox.

It was seen arsenic captious for value to beryllium beneath 700kg, truthful Lotus-level attraction went into each panel, to the grade that the Fiesta utilized 40% less stampings than the Escort.

Transverse mounting of the motor would springiness the Fiesta Escort-equivalent abstraction wrong but made aerodynamic optimisation challenging. Yet immoderate 250 tweaks from upwind passageway enactment yielded a standing of 0.42Cd – 0.6 little than the comparable Datsun Cherry.

Rather than spending loads connected creating a tiny motor from scratch, Ford revised its proven Kent unit, the caller squarer plan producing 40bhp oregon 45bhp successful 957cc signifier oregon 53bhp successful 1117cc guise.

This was linked to a caller four-speed manual gearbox, singular for its compactness. As successful the seminal 127, the layout resulted successful the 2 driveshafts being of unequal lengths.

Suspension was by a precise elemental MacPherson-strut layout up front, acquainted but for new-style bearings that reduced the required magnitude of steering effort, and a dormant axle astatine the rear to debar other value and guarantee accordant handling.

All this work was meant to springiness the Fiesta notably amended refinement than rivals. Indeed, we said: “As a portion of Ford thoroughness, this is possibly the astir awesome car yet.”

Britain was to beryllium the past marketplace to get the Fiesta, but our German analogous reported: “Even the basal Fiesta has nary aerial of austerity. The content of smallness is mislaid erstwhile you instrumentality the wheel. The [957cc] motor is precise eager, and with 2 radical aboard, the car is nary sluggard, cruising safely and amazingly softly astatine 70mph. And the 1117cc portion makes it rather capable to unrecorded with overmuch much almighty cars, particularly connected winding roads.

“One of the emblematic Fiesta features is easiness of handling. And each models thrust precise well, connected some creaseless and uneven surfaces.”

He concluded that “the Fiesta seems to beryllium the perfect car for the young household oregon arsenic a household car”. Some 2 cardinal radical agreed – or, if you see the consequent six generations of Fiesta, much than 22 million. Few cars person near oregon volition permission specified a legacy.