PARTY TIME
The Fiesta celebrated 40 years in production this year. We look back at the history of Ford of Europe’s longest-lived nameplate
Anyone remember the Ford Cars all-model brochure Ford used to issue? A lavish production in magazine format, there was usually a copy to be found in every doctor’s waiting room across the country and it listed the firm’s entire line-up in exhaustive detail.
The science of marketing has moved on since then but I recently found myself flicking through a copy from our archives and suddenly realised that of all the Ford model names from my childhood, only one has survived the test of time: Anglia, Escort, Orion, Sierra, Granada have all gone, but somewhere a plastic moulding machine is still churning out Fiesta badges by the thousand, 40 years after its launch.
The Fiesta is a significant Ford model for so many other reasons though: it was one of the first and last complete vehicles to be styled by Ghia as a Ford subsidiary and was also the first Ford model to be developed as a world car.
It’s often been assumed that the Fiesta was the result of Ford copying Volkswagen’s successful Polo, but in reality the practicalities would have made this impossible. In reality Ford had been considering a modern small car for many years and had established ‘Project Bobcat’ as early as 1969 to investigate the feasibiity of an entry-level model.
With early development taking place in Cologne, the project was signed off for production by Henry Ford II in December 1973. Meanwhile, Ford’s international subsidiaries had been invited to submit design proposals for the new car and at newly-acquired Ghia in Turin a young Tom Tjaarda came up with a neat modern hatchback which was mocked up into a runner using a Fiat 127 as a basis.
Until then Ghia’s input into the Ford empire had been largely limited to show car concepts and so the adoption of Tjaarda’s design for Project Bobcat was a major boost for the firm.
Tjaarda’s design was subsequently tweaked by Ford designer Uwe Bahnsen – who would later be responsible for the Sierra – and entered production as the Mk1 Fiesta.
The name of the new car was formally announced by Henry Ford II on December 18, 1975 but behind the scenes the car had nearly been born under an entirely different badge. Early suggestions of the name Lynx were discarded since Ford’s Mercury marque already used the name and Henry Ford II – who apparently always liked to be involved in naming discussions – was much taken with the alliteration in the phrase Ford Fiesta, together with its association with Spain where Ford had recently established its big Valencia operation. The stumbling block was that GM held the rights to the Fiesta
model name, but in a brilliant illustration of how the movers and shakers in ’70s Detroit did business, Ford put in a quick phone call to GM chairman Tom Murphy who gave the OK for his rivals to use the name. Had he known how successful Ford’s baby would be, he might not have been so generous.
The layout of the new car was of course very similar to VW’s Polo but by the same token this was of course the commonly accepted design for small cars: transverse engine, front-wheel drive, strut front suspension and a beam rear axle.
Production at Ford’s Saarlouis plant began on May 11, 1976 and at the Spanish Valencia subsidiary on October 18. A press launch was held during June at which then-Ford of Europe president Bob Lutz claimed in characteristically bold style that the Fiesta was the most important car for Ford since the Model T in 1908.
An exaggeration perhaps, but a modern small car was critical for Ford’s success in Europe. It was also to be the firm’s first ‘world car’ with sales planned on every continent including North America.
In Europe the car was an immediate hit. UK sales began in February 1977 and the car had notched up an impressive 500,000 units by November 1977. Production of the Fiesta began in Dagenham the same year and on January 9, 1979 the one millionth example left the Valencia assembly line. German production was moved the following year from Saarlouis to Cologne and in 1981 the two millionth Fiesta left the line there.
In North America however, the story was less positive: by the time the Fiesta was launched in the market, the oil crisis had largely receded but its legacy was that the cars which had gained prominence during the crisis – namely VW’s Rabbit (Golf) and Honda’s Civic – remained the popular choices. Ford advertising trumpeted the ‘Wundercar built in Germany’ but sales were dismal and the Fiesta was axed in 1980, destined not to reappear in the US and Canadian markets until 2010. Meanwhile, the European success of the Fiesta enabled Ford of Europe to post its best-ever results in 1977.
As launched in the UK, the Fiesta was available with a choice of engines badged as 1.0 in 957cc, 45 bhp form and 1.1 in 1117cc, 53 bhp trim. Specification levels were either the spartan basic model, Popular, L or Ghia.
The powerplant was rather less high-tech than Ford’s marketing suggested, being essentially the old Kent Crossflow dating from the days of the Anglia, now revised and renamed Valencia. It was perhaps surprisingly praised by road testers for its refinement. “The mistake one could easily make... is to think it has an overhead camshaft engine,” commented Autocar, adding “... it is astonishing to find how responsive it is, how free from valve gear noise and how willingly it revs.”
Praise indeed, but no doubt even those testers would have been horrified to find the same engine still doing service in the Fiesta-derived Ka in the 21st century.
In 1980, the 1298cc Valencia engine was installed in the car and marketed as the 1.3S. With 66 bhp, it created a sporting hatch which was the equal of the newly-launched MG Metro and offered something VW couldn’t match.
The 1.3S was merely a taster of what would come next. The short-lived Supersport appeared for 1980 with a neat styling package of spoilers and stripes together with sporty interior, alloy wheels and uprated suspension. The Supersport became the XR2 in 1981 when the 84 bhp 1597cc engine was installed and Ford had a runaway hit on its hands.
It was destined for short-lived glory though, since in August 1983 the Fiesta was facelifted into what we know as the MkII. Essentially a restyle of the original, the new line-up boasted a new smoother front end style which reduced drag from Cd0.42 to 0.40 and an enlarged engine bay for future engine options. The 1.3 Valencia engine disappeared from the line-up and was replaced in 1984 by the newly developed overhead-cam CVH unit which in 1597cc form was also used in the XR2. The same year, the Fiesta would celebrate its three millionth production record.
The third-generation Fiesta was unveiled in April 1989 and sat on an entirely new platform, developed with the ability to offer a four-door model in order to compete with the likes of the Peugeot 205 and even the Metro.
Mechanically, the CVH engines were continued but the new chassis offered improved ride and handling courtesy of semi-independent rear end, replacing the dead beam axle with a torsion beam set-up. The Valencia engines were uprated to the new lean-burn High Compression Swirl (HCS) design and for the first time the diesel was offered in the UK market using a PSA-sourced 1753cc unit.
Of course a sporting XR model was present in the line-up from the start and was now badged XR2i to signify the use of the 105 bhp fuel-injected 1.6 CVH engine shared with the XR3i.
This time round though, the XR2i wasn’t the range-topping model, since Ford took the recipe which had created its hot-rod front-drive Escort and applied it to the Fiesta to create the Fiesta RS Turbo – the first time the RS tag had been applied to the Fiesta. With 132 bhp, the blown Fiesta was a flyer and enabled Ford to compete head-on with the 205 GTi.
In 1992, the XR2i saw its CVH engine replaced by Ford’s new 1.6-litre Zetec 16-valve twin-cam producing 105 bhp and the result transformed the car, silencing the critics who had found the CVH coarse. The RS Turbo was replaced at the same time by the RS1800 in 1994, using the 130 bhp 1.8-litre Zetec 16-valve powerplant to good effect.
The 16-valve MkIII cars were destined to be rarities though, since the range was comprehensively facelifted in 1995, with a MkIV being launched at the Frankfurt show in September.
Like the MkI to MkII transition, the MkIV was effectively an extensive facelift of the previous generation but significant detail improvements updated its appeal substantially.
Under the skin, the biggest change was the replacement of the old Crossflow-derived engines with a new, smaller
version of the Zetec twin cam engine. Originally to have been codenamed Sigma until Lancia’s objections ruled it out, the engines were marketed as Zetec-SE and were co-developed with Yamaha.
This was the era when Ford – stung by the harsh criticism of its MkV Escort in 1992 – was going all-out to improve the driver appeal of its cars and the Fiesta was one of the first beneficiaries.
The Zetec-SE engine was a work of art and even in its smallest form gave the Fiesta tremendous driver appeal. Free-revving and refined, it offered a similar feel to the smaller K-Series engines and boasted 60 bhp from the entry-level 1.25-litre, with 80 bhp from the 1.4.
This time round, there was no sports model in the range, thanks largely to insurance considerations in the UK market, the semi-sporting model being marketed with the Si badge which brought neat alloy wheels, foglights and sporty interior but was certainly no RS or XR.
In 1999, the MkIV received a facelift to match the Fiesta’s appearance to the ‘New Edge’ style then being introduced across the European Ford range, gaining reshaped headlights and restyled rear. The big news was the addition of the larger 1.6-litre Zetec engine which heralded the return of a sports model. The Zetec S launched in 2000 used a 102 bhp version of this unit and with uprated chassis was considered a fine warm hatch by road testers.
In 2001 the car notched up the ten millionth example and at the Frankfurt show the fifth generation was unveiled. Once again an all-new design, the MkV was a thoroughly modern small car with its styling including prominent headlamps and wheelarches similar to the Focus.
The engine range was carried over largely unchanged from the previous generation, although Ford’s adoption of the Zetec name as a trim level meant the 16-valve petrol engines were renamed Duratec.
The return of the hot Fiesta arrived in 2004, with the launch of the Fiesta ST which used a 150 bhp, 2-litre Duratec engine and sat on 17-inch wheels with bold striping and bodykit.
The new car was itself facelifted in the autumn of 2005 with revised front and rear styling and upgrades to interior trim.
The so-called MkVII was previewed in 2007,with production beginning in August 2008 and the car displayed a completely different style from previous models. With a facelift in 2014, it continues in production today and the 40-year milestone was commemmorated with the launch of the 200 bhp Fiesta ST200 at the Geneva show with production beginning in June. A fitting way to celebrate its survival as the only Ford car badge to survive four decades.