[GhiaFan]

Wow this guy says some very positive comments after his Fiesta test drive.
FOXNews.com - Quick Spin: 2011 Ford Fiesta - Auto

Some excerpts
"More than anything else, the Fiesta is so refined overall that it makes the otherwise excellent Fit feel like a well-made steel drum in comparison, and the Toyota Yaris, Chevy Aveo and others like rusty ones. Granted, the one I drove was top of the line, but the best of the worst is still junk. The Fiesta is not junk.

the materials are excellent, particularly the soft-touch plastic on top of the dashboard. You could sleep on the stuff and not completely hate yourself in the morning. The same could be said for the substantial front seats with legroom fitting of a car that is currently built and sold in Germany.

On the inside the Ford comes across as superior, with a premium look and feel that outclasses many larger cars, let alone the competition in the sub-$14,000 range

Then, of course, there is the engine. Despite its measly 1.6-liter displacement, the 4-cylinder engine is a torquey little treat with the deep thrum of a mill twice that size. From the driver's seat, this is the best-sounding small four cylinder engine I've heard in a long time, enhanced by a cabin that filters out road and wind noise like there's a professional audio technician on board. Unless you have a taste for buzz boxes, one rev and you'll be hooked, too."

 

[Marc]

Talk about positive reviews, how about:

Crashing the party: A tire incident in the Ford Fiesta

If you want to read about how the car drives, that review is coming in our next issue. For now, I’ll tell you how it crashes.

I never saw it coming. A tire had flown off an Oldsmobile Cutlass heading in the opposite direction on the freeway, rolled past its horrified driver, skipped over the median, bounced at least 20 feet into the air and smashed through my windshield as I emerged from under an overpass. At least, that’s what I was told by a witness kind enough to stop--and the Cutlass driver, who, after successfully steering his car to the shoulder, sprinted across eight lanes of Memorial Day traffic to make sure he hadn’t killed me.

The metallic green Ford Fiesta, one of only a handful brought to the States for us journalist types to test-drive, looked like a squished ash borer, the glass completely breached where the rearview mirror once hung, a skid mark on the hood the telltale sign of the original impact and the roof crumpled where the tire ended its destructive ways. Inside, circuit boards lay scattered about, wires dangled uselessly from the headliner, and every surface glistened under a thick coating of shattered tempered glass.

(Oh, tempered glass! Two days later, still flossing the stuff from between my teeth, I was more grateful for it than ever.)

Had the tire hit just six inches to the left, it might have landed in my lap. Or my brain. Instead, I walked away with little more than a right arm splattered with exploded glass, the tiny droplets of blood twinkling on my hand and wrist a testament to, I don’t know, the mood of the Fates that day, a buildup of good karma or the beating wings of a butterfly in China.

Regardless of why the tire chose my car or why I was spared decapitation, I found myself in awe of the Fiesta’s actual performance under fire. The manner in which it sustained such forceful damage isn’t something tested for by the feds or even the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. No airbags deployed (the car was struck from above, not in front, where the airbag sensors sit), and the car was traveling at 75 mph, far faster than any prescribed crash test mandates.

Throw in the fact that we’re talking about a car significantly smaller than a Ford Focus--and, by all accounts, smaller even than a Honda Fit, if only by millimeters--and it’s astounding that the tire didn’t utterly atomize it.

Then again, the car will likely live to drive another day, thanks to a little something called boron steel.

Used extensively in the roof structure of the Fiesta, particularly in the A- and B-pillars, boron steel is one of a variety of ultra-high-strength steels, so hard that it resists conventional cutting methods--including the Jaws of Life.

The use of boron steel isn’t new; the stuff’s been around for years now. But its application in a car like the Fiesta, a B-segment, entry-level ride that will start at about $15,000 when it debuts here next year, is a first. We hope it’s not the last.

They just don’t build small cars like they used to. And thank goodness for that.

(Source: Autoweek)

 

[azulejost]

Here are some photos of the aforementioned incident (Link) Quite a blow and all the more impressive she was able to walk away.

 

[Mark Kleis]

All things considered (car moving at 75 MPH, tire going OTHER direction at likely 50-70 MPH), that thing took that like a champ! I've seen cars get torn to pieces from similar accidents.

 

[Marc]

And another "review": The Columbus Dispatch : Generating buzz

Is the Fiesta really too small for American roads?
How often you see a full size MPV with only the driver and no passengers at all?

 

[golf strom]

I gotta chuckle when I see the comments about a Fiesta being too small for American roads. Maybe in the mind of said research group, (which are a dime a dozen) and seriously how did they come to that conclusion? What metrics did they use? (Although I hate words like "metrics" to describe the method.) I think Mr. Magliano's comments are utter nonsense.


So even with a terrible economy, and fairly low gas prices, cars like the Fit, Yaris, and Versa are selling pretty well, and this is still a "niche" catagory? That's just amusing considering that for the most part of the past couple of years the most explosive growth in cars was in the subcompact class.

 

[Mark Kleis]

I gotta chuckle when I see the comments about a Fiesta being too small for American roads. Maybe in the mind of said research group, (which are a dime a dozen) and seriously how did they come to that conclusion? What metrics did they use? (Although I hate words like "metrics" to describe the method.) I think Mr. Magliano's comments are utter nonsense.


So even with a terrible economy, and fairly low gas prices, cars like the Fit, Yaris, and Versa are selling pretty well, and this is still a "niche" catagory? That's just amusing considering that for the most part of the past couple of years the most explosive growth in cars was in the subcompact class.

I do agree about comments like that, and the idea that it is too small. Do keep in mind though, even with recent growth it's still less than 5% of the total sales...so technically, it's still fairly niche.