Running on Empty: Let's have a Fiesta

Summer is here and the new model year cars are just around the corner.

So, let’s have a party or a Fiesta if you are really in the mind for one.

I wanted to love the Ford Fiesta from the moment I first heard about it. Ford is an American car company that really does make good cars. Really. No joke.

I have owned a Ford truck for many years and have been very satisfied with it, even though I am often razzed and told “do you know what FORD stands for...Found on Road Dead.” Old jokes do die hard and the purpose here is not to analyze the ups and downs, the where as or the why for, of a car company, at least not today anyway, but to talk about a neat little car that often goes overlooked.

The Ford Fiesta is a front wheel drive superminisupersubcompact manufactured and marketed by the Ford Motor Company and built in Europe, Brazil, United States, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, China, India and South Africa, for some time now and with proven success.

The Fiesta is marketed worldwide, including Japan and has been very successful since its introduction in 1976 selling over 12 million cars.

By 2010, the sixth-generation of the Fiesta had been introduced worldwide, including in the United States and Canada—making it the first Fiesta model to be sold in North America since 1980. Ford sold nearly 25000 of these cars in the US the first year it was reintroduced. Not to shabby.

In late 2008 Motor Trend called the new generation of Fiesta a "superb little car" whose "greatest problem is that it's still a year away", a reference to the fact that the Fiesta would not arrive in the USA until early 2010.

The 2011 Fiesta was one of the five finalists for the 2011 Green Car of the Year awarded by the Green Car Journal in November 2010, competing with two plug-in electric vehicles, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt (the winner), and two hybrid electric vehicles.

I have to tell you the Fiesta is a great little car. It's great for all sorts of reasons, from the superior size of its trunk to its composure on the questionable roads we have to drive on and even the shape of its steering wheel. It just is, and if you want proper car-buying advice based on a factual assessment, go out and buy the Fiesta. The new Fiesta is a genuinely great car.

But hold on, with all this said, why don’t I see more of these little cars on Larkfield Road? What exactly is the problem? Price? No. MPG? No. Style? No. Performance? No. Why are 86% of the Fiesta car sales overseas?

Old jokes do die hard. The American consumer has been burned in the past by the auto-makers. Burned so bad that buying habits have become ingrained and no amount of slick advertising can make a dent in the perception that the consumer has for good or bad.

The Ford Fiesta is worth serious consideration for anyone looking for a car in that class, for now I will continue to drive my truck.