I'm willing to bet that the Audi won't be leaps and bounds ahead of the Ford as the price would suggest. Its just a hunch. Ford has been doing the small car thing better than anyone else as of late, and to have Audi suddenly decide to jump into the small car game after the Fiesta and R61 (?) MINI move it ahead so far... They're late to the party.
I don't know whether it's an American thing, but just because it's a small car it certainly doesn't mean it's in the same class as the Fiesta. Here's the thing:
Fiesta, Mazda2, Clio, C3, Micra etc - in the same class.
MINI, A1, DS3 - "premium" small cars. You pay more, you get more style, you get a higher quality product.
Comparing Citroen's DS3 to the C3 on the same platform is the perfect case in point. One is a basic small car, the other is a jazzed-up, premium-orientated small car.
The Fiesta resides in the former camp. Just because you only get a very small selection of small cars in the States, doesn't mean they're all in the same class.
I wouldn't call Ford's style "forced" by any means, its arguably the best-looking car in the segment outside the DS3.
Really? I think it looks absolutely spectacular. Its a shame I'll probably never see one in person.
I know it's a personal opinion thing, but I disagree completely. The Ford's design does look very forced to me. It's not even slightly an effortless good looker, they've deliberately given it weird lights and lines in the bodywork going everywhere and nowhere to make it look "dynamic". You've got uncomfortable intersections of lines like where the nice, round wheelarch blister meets the heavy swage line running down the side of the car, yet that swage line is spoiled because they've put the (massive) doorhandle smack in the middle of it (two on the five-door), breaking up the line.
The rear lights don't go anywhere, they just sit uncomfortably in the middle of a bunch of curves and creases and they completely missed the trick of putting them next to the rear window glass so there's not a strip of metal going between the two which would have improved the rear massively. The tucked-in area where the rear plate is looks really cheap and like a complete afterthought - it would have been better served by having a recess in the rear bumper.
Back to the front - wing-mirrors with turn signals in them are officially the Stupidest Ever Idea in a city car, because they're right in the line of fire in confined streets, yet cost a fortune to replace. So it's not just daft styling, it's bad design too. Ditto the massive front lights, the corners of which are in just the right spot to crack in an accident, and you'd then have to replace the whole, huge (and likely expensive) unit.
Finally (ignoring the interior, which is also apparently Ford's idea of "funky" rather than ergonomic and pleasingly styled) you've got the fact that it looks even worse unless you go for the biggest wheels possible - which I've already mentioned is stupid on a city car. The MINI looks okay with smaller wheels, so it shows that a half-decent design doesn't need massive concept-car wheels to work.
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Oh, and as for the DS3, it's nice enough, but at the end of the day it's a rather bulbous-looking car with some odd details. Not as bad as the Ford, and it's supposed to be very good to drive judging by early tests, but visually it looks like too much car. It doesn't look compact, which is a trick the MINI and 500 carry off very well.
Also, I don't know if Ford Europe is getting this, but in the US they're offering the Fiesta with the PowerShift gearbox that is a dual-clutch six-speed unit. I don't think it has paddle shifters, but, its the same deal.
We probably will get that box. The trouble is, it'll be expensive (like all DSG-style boxes). The worst thing is that Fords are already pretty much the most expensive cars in their class over here (when the hell did that happen? Fords used to be just about the cheapest. You can quite easily spend £30k on a Mondeo over here now, which is just ludicrous) so it'll turn a non-premium small car into a non-premium small car with a premium pricetag.
I'm not anti-Ford (in fact, I'm a big fan) but their current generation of cars really, really doesn't work for me. They're neither pleasing to the eye (unless you happen to be sucked in by "style" rather than "design") nor even very affordable.
