hi I'm Kelsey Mays for cars.com fords little fiesta is up about twenty two
percent in sales through the first half of 2013
and this dramatic facelift might shed a little light on why the 2014 fiesta
which went on sale this past spring has a new face a remodel dashboard and you
drive trains all of that added on to the fact that there's sedan and hatchback
body style brings us to our test car a mid-level fiesta SE hatchback will cover
what's new and we'll talk
all-important affordability and mpeg-4 for its entry level car here in the US
as automotive nose jobs go the fiestas is pretty compelling front center is
this new grill adopt an Aston Martin like trapezoidal shape that's similar to
Ford's sharp-looking fusion family sedan
it gives the Fiesta a bit more visual with which is important because this is
still a pretty small car in its class overall bumper to bumper length for the
hatchback under a hundred and sixty inches competitors like the Nissan Versa
note the honda fit the hyundai accent hatchback
those are all more than a hundred sixty inches two or three inches longer than
the Fiesta that shows on the inside where overall passenger volume in the
fiesta hatchback is only about eighty five cubic feet
it's about 52 as much as nine cubic feet less than those competitors
the backseat is pretty snug if you fold those seats down maximum cargo room is
only about twenty six cubic feet and by the numbers
that's less than half the space that you would get in a honda fit hatchback with
its seats folded down
it continues up front here where there's a lot of space taken up by the doors and
kind of a thick center console here for your needs to go if you reach over to
adjust the climate control you might end up touching your passengers name which
be kind of awkward depending on your passenger is definitely not high marks
here for Ford like in the focus and all the way up to the tourists there
full-size car for space efficiency relative to the class that kind of
continues to be a Ford issue but we do see very high quality in this car
there's things like generous padding along the arm wrestle on the doors
there's even padding along the dashboard if that matters to you attractive
Silver's here along the steering wheel and along
the door handles new this year and a big aspect of this redesign dashboard is my
ford touch it adopts a 6.5 inch screen here a little smaller than the 8 inch
screen in other ford vehicles with MyFord Touch works reasonably well less
lag than in earlier editions of my for touch but in part because the screen is
smaller
there's a lot of really tiny buttons that you have to get to there's a little
hood that sits over the screen for my for touch here it does cut down on glare
but if you elevate your seat
depending how tall you are it can obscure things like the time of day
kind of an important thing to notice now one editor drove this car more than 400
miles on the highway and she said the seats were pretty awful
the seat cushions were to narrow the backs formulas they didn't have enough
padding to them over all the seats caused a lot of but fatigue she said
take that for what it is
during that drive though our test car got 40 . two miles per gallon according
to the trip computer
pretty good numbers considering that with the 1.6 liter 4 cylinder and
five-speed manual transmission which our test car has the fiestas epa-rated at 27
city 38 highway fairly competitive with the class the automatic a dual-clutch
6-speed Auto is rated at 29 city 39 highway and an available
sfe automatic version bumps that up to 30 city 41 highway again pretty
competitive numbers there there's also a forthcoming three cylinder turbocharged
engine as well as a fiesta st whose turbo four-cylinder makes a hundred and
ninety seven horsepower
what's really compelling about the fiesta though is how well it drives it
rides and handles like a car that's price here and bigger than the car that
it is a pretty good there are only complaint really is with the available
dual-clutch automatic which we've driven in years past it's about a smooth as a
kid trying to pick up the ladies in high school chemistry class but it does get
better mileage as we said we don't know afford to fix that for 2014 because we
haven't driven it yet so we'll have to wait and see if yes the hatchback starts
at around fifteen thousand five hundred dollars with the destination charge
add in everyday convenience is like an automatic transmission power windows
keyless entry and bluetooth and you're looking at about an eighteen thousand
dollar car that roughly matches the accent hatchback
it beats the fit
and chevy sonic hatchbacks but the room here versa note starts at more than a
thousand dollars cheaper again with similar features
still the Fiesta packs driving refinement that goes beyond what the
Nissan offers it has yet to be outpaced by any of its competitors
that means if you're willing to sacrifice a little bit of space the
Fiesta is worth checking out
yeah