LOS ANGELES -- The Fiesta has been a huge success in Europe and Asia for about a year now, and Ford is finally bringing the small car party to America.
The sporty fuel sipper marks Ford's return to the subcompact market it sacrificed on the altar of SUVs in 1997, and the company is counting on it to win over young buyers. With European styling, an aggressive social networking campaign and bright colors with crazy names like lime squeeze, Ford is betting the 2011 Fiesta will be a hit with 20-somethings. It's already is a big seller overseas, where 500,000 have rolled out of showrooms since October, 2008. The Fiesta is the second-biggest seller in Europe, and it could be equally popular in America.
"Here in the U.S., 80,000 people have raised their hand to say they want one," Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, said as the car was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
We've all seen the Fiesta countless times already. Ford first unveiled a prototype at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2007, then showed it off at the shows in Detroit and Beijing. It made the rounds again last year, and this year Ford made it the focus of its "Fiesta Movement" social networking campaign. Some 100 20-somethings -- the so-called Millenials -- spent six months living with European-spec Fiestas and telling the world about it online. The campaign generated more than 675,000 Flickr views, 3.7 million Twitter impressions and 5.5 million views on YouTube.
Despite the exposure -- some would call it overexposure -- the Fiesta is an attractive and stylish car that bears little in common with the Fiesta subcompact Ford unceremoniously killed in 1980. It is sleek and somewhat muscular, though some might consider it "cute." Like most cars, it looks better with two doors than with four. Oddly, it doesn't look silly with a racing stripe. Power comes from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 119 horsepower and 109 foot-pounds of torque. With any luck Ford will turn its Special Vehicle Team loose on one so it can wear that stripe proudly.
Ford says the FIesta is good for 30 mpg around town and 40 mpg on the highway, figures that beat the 2010 Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit. No need to worry about getting squished, either -- Ford's packed the Fiesta with safety features like electronic stability control and more airbags than The Sean Hannity Show.
This won't be the only time Ford raids its European stable to bring small cars to the states. It plans to bring six more small and subcompact cars to this side of the pond by 2012, at which point it hopes to sell more than 1 million cars based on the Fiesta platform annually. It will spend more than $500 million to retool its plants in the United States to do the job.
"People are moving more and more toward cars (as opposed to SUVs and trucks), and the subcompact market is growing by double-digits," Fields said. "We think these segments are going to grow."
Here's hoping the next car Ford brings over is the 65-mpg ECOnetic Fiesta diesel.
UPDATE: 1:15 p.m.: The Fiesta will start at $13,320.
Photos: Jim Merithew / Wired.com
See Also:
- Driven: Ford's Fiesta Tames New York's Meanest Streets
- Ford Bets the Fiesta on Social Networking
- Ford's ECOnetic Fiesta Gets 65 MPG. You Can't Have One.
- Students Help Ford Bring the Cloud to Cars
