Ford are pitching their Fiesta at young, fashion-conscious drivers. ROSEMARY MACCABEsteps sceptically inside to see if the image stands up to all the talk
I’VE ALWAYS been an easy touch when it comes to advertising campaigns, so it was with surprise that I experienced a feeling akin to scepticism at the Ford Fiesta Fashion of the Future presentation, as influences for the interior design of the Fiesta were detailed. Prada, really? Philip Treacy? Surely not. I wished someone would stand up and say: “For Christ’s sake, people, this is a Fiesta, not a Lamborghini!” Needless to say, no one did. I was there, afterall, to see what Ruth Pauli, chief designer of colours and trims at Ford Europe, had to say about how fashion combines with the new Fiesta, a car she happily describes as “sleek” and “compact”.
Not to be picky, but surely there are sleeker cars out there. The Jaguar XK, for example, although I doubt it could be put into the “compact” category. How about a nice, nippy Ferrari, or a BMW of some ilk? But why aim so high? Why not look at the Mazda MX-5?
But while those cars are undoubtedly suited to a particular type of person – someone with a need for speed, thrills and the demonstration of status through their modus transportus – the Fiesta, says Pauli, is targeted at the young, urban, fashion-conscious woman. The person, she says, who wants a good-looking car. The person, she says, who wants a “sprinty” car. The idea I have in my head of a Fiesta is obviously very different to hers, although our ideas of what I would want (given that I am young, urban and fashion-conscious) from a car are not so far removed. So what better way to test out a marketing campaign than to put the target in the firing range?
My own car is a 1996 Subaru. It has a 650cc engine, costs €30 to fill (from bone dry) and goes from 0-100km/h in about 20 minutes. So when it comes to aspirational lifestyles, mine doesn’t extend as far as my wheels. I may read Vogue, but I’ve never felt the need to ex-tend my love of fashion to my mode of transport.
I go to the Ford dealership to take a spin and, far from the vision of Magenta the marketing material had me believing I’d be zipping around in, the car I’m shown is a cross between lime green and acid yellow. It’s a colour Pauli calls Squeeze, “after the caipirinha cocktail”.
The other main colour is Magenta, which Fred Attride, the salesman in Finlays Ford Newbridge, describes as “lipstick pink” – and not in a good way.
Suffice it to say, the flagship colours would divide the target audience into two categories: male and female. Because, obviously, women like lipstick, and men like Formula One.
The car itself looks great – but I like shiny things (metallic paint will set you back €415 on top of the starter price of approximately €17,000) and have always had a soft spot for anything new. Its clean, sleek lines fit it into the description of “kinetic”, something Attride tells me is one of Ford’s new standards. “All of the cars should look as if they’re moving, even when they’re not,” he says.
This sounds a bit headachey (and why would anyone want their car to look as if it’s moving, when it’s not?), but the car looks a lot sportier than a 1.2-litre, three-door city car should.
I’d love to say that I drove it like a sporty little car, but if anything, the controls were a little too sensitive for me. I like to feel my gearstick clunking into position – in the Fiesta, gear changes were as smooth as a Barry White track and the brake pedal seemed to sense me before I got near it. In Ford’s defence, this probably has a lot more to do with my own driving; used to cruising (in the vaguest of senses) around town in a car that requires fifth gear before it will go above 40km/h, my handling may be a little rough.
Is it comfortable? Well I doubt I’m supposed to care. Aren’t I a cool, trendy, urban youngster? Surely I should be willing to sit on hot coals if they’ll make me look good. But it really is: the ride is smooth and, above all, refreshingly silent. No throaty roars from the engine of this three-door. And hello, power steering – no more 12-point turns.
But is it fashionable? Is it, as Pauli says in a way only German car designers can, “sexy”? Colour choice aside , I could probably say in all honesty that I was 90 per cent sold.
I could get a Mini Cooper in excellent nick for roughly the same price, but there’s something a little bit too cool about the Mini – I associate them with women who work as administrative assistants, wear court shoes and have that oh-so-elusive “swingy ponytail”.
The Fiesta is not going to stick out like a sore thumb like a Toyota iQ might; it hasn’t got the mammy factor of a Volkswagen Polo; and it falls short of being so fashionable as to have become boring, like the Mini or even the Nissan Figaro. But is this enough to convince a young professional to part with hard-earned cash?
“I sold one to a man last week,” says Attride. “Would you believe it, he was in his 70s?” I probably would. How many buyers in their early 20s have their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the prize?
If I had the cash, and the desire to buy a new car, there is only one reason the Fiesta might not be high on my list.
It may sound vacuous, but it’s the name. Ford should have stuck to the original concept name – Verve – rather than assign this almost entirely new car a name associated with frugality and that very uncool decade, the 1990s. If there’s anything us fashionable people don’t want, it’s to feel like we’re behind the times. Nobody really wants to call up their friends and say “yeah, I got a new car – it’s a Fiesta”. It’s a conversation stopper, and that’s just not fashionable.
