GOT A COMMENT ON NO LIMITS? EMAIL ME AT MARK@MARKFORSYTH.NET

WHEN you build the UK’s best-selling car and it’s time for a refresh, you can’t really afford to get it wrong can you?

Happily, the new Ford Fiesta isn’t more dangerous, heavier, slower, less comfortable, noisier or more cramped and less pleasant to drive than the previous model.

Such motoring disasters, sadly for us scribblers, are rare to non-existent nowadays.

I’d like nothing better than a new car that broke down mid-test with something like a catastrophic crankshaft failure or a piston hitting the valves and then the whole car bursting into flames.

Disasters give us far more to write about.

As I type this from somewhere in northern Spain, having driven two versions of the Fiesta on some of the best twisting, deserted roads ever created, I can tell you this new model is not a disaster. Quite the opposite, in fact. Our most eventful happening – a blind left-hander that tightened unexpectedly over the brow of a blind hill – did nothing more than generate a small amount of tyre screech despite the application of more brake mid-corner than is normally wise or sensible.

This event, in an original 1976 Ford Fiesta devoid of the active hand-of-god safety aids, would have seen us pirouetting into the Armco, probably backwards, before somersaulting headlight over tailgate over the top of the barriers into the rocky ravine below. And then bursting into flames. The Fiesta has moved on. Tick the correct boxes and stump up the cash and it will automatically apply the brake if you’re about to back into something – just like it does if you are about to do the same in one of the forward gears.

It’ll also detect that kamikaze pedestrian before you hit them…and apply the brakes to stop you doing so. Choose and pay for the appropriate optional extras and it’ll even park itself and stop you deviating from your lane on a motorway.

Fitted with the frankly astonishing 140PS EcoBoost engine and slick sixspeed box, it’s really nice to drive too.

Pulling surprisingly hard from just over 1,500rpm all the way to its 6,500rpm soft rev limiter there’s always plenty of power on tap to punch you out of a bend or safely nip past slower traffic.

And it does so with a pleasing, guttural but subdued growl from the little three-cylinder engine.

Ford reckon just 10% of buyers will choose the 1.5 diesel option.

And with petrol engines this good, I’m not surprised at the low diesel take up.

On the motorway, the leggy sixth gear sees the motor spinning at under 3,000rpm at 70mph. As a result it’s quiet inside.

The fact that it’s big-car refined inside is important because the best thing about the new Fiesta, or rather the best optional extra, is the B&O Play in-car entertainment system.

For £300 this 10-speaker (including sub-woofer in the boot) hi-fi system is amazing value for money.

I tried to kill it with some seriously bass-heavy tunes but even at maximum volume I couldn’t find a track to create distortion.

Honestly, I’ve tried systems in so-called premium brands and they haven’t matched this B&O set-up.

In fact for me, as a big music fan, this £300 optional extra would be reason to choose a Fiesta over any of its nearest competitors.

Three and five-door Fiestas will be in the shops early this month.

Prices start at £12,715 and nine trim levels are offered. BANGIN’: Fiesta is quiet at 70mph but not if your music’s on