A little car living up to its big title

Chris Knapman finds out what it’s like to live with Britain’s best-selling car, the fantastic Ford Fiesta

At the time I didn’t realise the significance of my actions. That by nominating the Fiesta as the Telegraph’s Car of the Year 2014, it would tip the result in its favour, and thus put me behind the wheel of a test car not for a week or two but a full year, day in, day out, through rain or, well, mostly just rain so far actually. The idea behind this, and indeed all of our long-term tests, is to bring you an even richer picture of what a particular model is like to live with, and thus better inform you when the time comes to choose your next car. True to that, much time was spent weighing up where the sweetest spot in the Fiesta range lay in terms of value for money. By remarkable coincidence, this turned out to be exactly the same spec that we recommend to readers on our detailed reviews website (shameless plug alert number one), telegraph.co.uk/cars. In September, three months after I placed the order, a 1.0-litre petrol Ecoboost in Zetec trim was delivered, to which I’d added power folding mirrors and rear proximity sensors (both useful for on-street parking), metallic paint, an alarm, DAB radio and active city braking, which will automatically perform an emergency stop, should I forget. All of which inflated the car’s base price of £14,545 to £15,740. If that sounds expensive for a small car, bear in mind that discounts are readily available (witness a fellow Fiesta driver who just picked up a higher-spec Titanium model with satnav for £13,500) and you are really just paying market rates. Which, in turn is one of the reasons the Fiesta has been the UK’s best-selling car for seven consecutive years. You can find out in more detail how I’ve been getting on with our Ford, as well as read weekly updates about the cars run by my colleagues, by checking our long-term test pages at (shameless plug number two) telegraph.co.uk/ cars/long-term-tests. You will see that despite a couple of niggles, the overall picture is so far very positive, with the combination of good packaging, lively performance and a ride and handling balance that is better resolved than on 90 per cent of the other cars I test all counting in its favour. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the little Ford is one of the most enjoyable cars to drive this side of £50,000, which is all the more impressive when you remember it’s not a flamespitting hot hatch, but a perfectly standard supermini. My experience with the fuel economy has not been quite as glowing. The figures range from as low as 36mpg to as high as 44mpg, neither of which sits very well against a claimed 60.1mpg. For that I blame a combination of lots of short journeys from cold and Mrs K’s heavy right foot, which hopefully won’t be within striking distance when she reads this. The only thing our little family occasionally struggles with is the limited boot space, which means we can’t use the Fiesta for weekends away. I’m aware that’s like buying shoes that you know are a size too small and complaining when they don’t fit. Which is why my vote for Car of the Year 2015 goes to the Bentley Flying Spur. Ford Fiesta 1.0T Ecoboost Price as tested: £15,740 Power: 99bhp 0-62 mph: 11.2sec Average mpg: 60.1 Rating: