The first generation Ford Ka makes a cheap, fun and highly usable alternative.
Chris Svensson was a young man with both talent and ideas, and his brainchild was exactly the supermini Ford needed to funk up its small car offering.
Adeep-dyed car nut, Chris Svensson studied vehicle design at Coventry University and the Royal College of Art. His first job was for Ford, where every student’s career dream came true for him immediately – Svensson’s final year thesis was a design for a very small, very cool supermini, and four years after he left college his concept was launched as a production model. Svensson died in 2018, felled tragically young by cancer, but by then he had notched up a stellar career bookended by two iconic Ford models – 2017’s GT supercar and 1996’s KA.
In the 1990s Ford had at its disposal a fine small- car platform in the Mk4 Fiesta, which enjoyed notably good handling. Upon this it was able to build derivatives with relatively low development costs. The results were the KA in 1996, and the lithe Puma sports coupé which arrived the following year.
The Fiesta was an evolution of its previous generation, a familiar if largely undistinguished feature of Britain’s motoring landscape which hid a sparkling chassis beneath a distinctly lumpen body. In contrast, the KA was a radical concoction of swooping curves, confident straight lines and triangular forms. Ford marketed the idea as its New Edge philosophy, which would go on to spawn the genuinely excellent Focus and catastrophically horrid Cougar, but the source material could be easily found by anyone leafing through the college sketch books of young Mr Svensson.
The KA was launched as affordable, simple wheels for younger drivers, although the fact that it could accommodate four adults in comfort broadened its appeal somewhat. My aunt had one and loved it. Indeed, one of my colleagues on this magazine bought his KA new, flogged it mercilessly around the country on journalistic duties and declared it a brilliant machine.
The root of its appeal seemed to be that it was great fun, completely practical and, well, not a Fiesta. The KA also handled brilliantly. 1990s Fords weren’t known for being beautifully constructed, although the engineering behind them was world- class. They were, like many Fords before them, made to a price, but for the money a Ford of this period would almost always out-handle its competitors while feeding the experience straight to the driver. And back then, before Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) suppression had taken its toll on cars made for the masses, dynamic appeal still had a value.
Depending on specification, the KA weighed in at between 820kg and 960kg. Low mass and the sharp suspension made it phenomenal fun to hustle across the landscape. As a result, nobody really cared that the engine was little more than an evolution of 1959’s Kent mill. By 1996 this four- cylinder motor had moved through several phases – and every generation of the Fiesta – to gain a crossflow head and fuel injection. In the KA it was a 1297cc unit that developed 59bhp at 5000rpm. More importantly it gave 77lb.ft of torque at 3500rpm. In today’s terms this doesn’t sound terribly impressive, but the engine was extremely tractable and allowed the driver to make the most of
the grip and handling potential on open roads. In more urban settings it also made the little Ford a surprisingly relaxing thing to pilot. The gearbox was always a five-speed manual which, being a Ford unit, worked perfectly well.
In many ways the KA was rather like the Renault Twingo, which preceded it by three years. Mechanically quite conventional, these cars were a triumph of poppy styling both inside and out. However, the Twingo was very much a French affair and the reason you are reading about the Ford rather than the Renault here is simple: the KA was the one available in right-hand drive.
That styling, which owed so much to Svensson’s ideas, was as practical as it was enjoyable. Dominating the scheme were curvy front and rear bumpers in dark grey plastic. These underlined the cool, strippeddown aesthetic and meant that minor parking contacts didn’t result in major bills. They were also an immediate target for car modification enthusiasts, who commissioned body shops to spray them up. Sadly, the plastic contained an additive designed to reduce the deleterious effects of ultra-violet light on the material, and this proved quite resistant to the application of paint. In 1999 Ford realised that buyers quite fancied a colourful aesthetic rather than brutalism, and finally also offered bodycoloured bumpers.
As a car enthusiast of, well, a certain age, my heart leaps when I find a car interior that features plenty of exposed, body-colour metalwork. On this front the KA delivers comprehensively. Personally I really like this car’s cabin. It might be composed of reasonably-priced plastics, but they are arranged in a symphony of swoops, curves and circles that provides far more interest than the lounge of a Mk4 Fiesta. There is even a two-spoke steering wheel, a nod to early XR Fords that I love – although I admit this is a touch which may be lost on those not approaching their 50th birthday. In the context of a car that will now be between 12 and 24 years old, the elemental nature of the interior has additional benefits as there is little to go wrong, so most things still work well. And used spares are abundantly available.
Despite its apparent simplicity, many KAs are quite well equipped with useful stuff. Depending upon trim level, they can feature air conditioning, power steering, leather trim and – Ford’s innovation in lowbudget motoring – the brilliant heated front screen. A series of special edition models can also bring goodies such as a fulllength fabric sunroof. In 2002 the venerable Endura engine was replaced by an overheadcam motor, but as it did almost the same job as its predecessor, nobody really noticed.
Although they are footnotes to this particular story, the KA did have two offspring. Both were wider-arched than their parent and both enjoyed a revvy 1.6-litre Zetec engine. The SportKA was a fixed-head, sports derivative of KA, while the StreetKA was an interesting convertible constructed by Pininfarina. Both cars basically took what KA did best and did a bit more of it, and as a result they both have an enthusiastic following of their own to this day – we may well return to look at those in a later issue.
The compact, curvesand-slashes lines remained throughout the Mk1 KA’s remarkably long production life, for the simple reason that they worked perfectly well and a facelift was unnecessary. When the car was finally updated in 2008, its successor shared absolutely nothing with its forebear except the name. It was based on the Fiat 500, for crying out loud. The fact that it was so little altered for 12 years is one of the reasons why the Mk1 KA is fast emerging as a classic of the near future.
These days, because the KA itself was often a muchloved member of the family, those that have survived can frequently be found in a rather happier state than contemporary Fiestas. Lowmileage examples are worth hunting out, because with a little care they can be thoroughly enjoyed for years as their value mounts. Regardless of whether you’ve owned one in the past or not, one of these could well be the KA you always promised yourself.