When I chuck a Fiesta around a tight corner I get annoyed with the stupidly light steering, then I park it somewhere and get out and am bitterly reminded of the hideous front end. Embarrassed by it I jump back in to hide my face, and am confronted with over complicated and fiddly interior controls, and general interior shapes that make me feel the car thinks I should be compensating for something. I look up, straight out the windscreen, I still have the bright blue dash in my peripherals, great (not). I fire it up again, and drive off, oh noes! It's a 1.4L auto with such little ability to move I'm not sure if I AM moving. I trade it for a manual, a little better, but not enough to fix the rest of the car. I continue driving, I get a flat tyre, oh great that's right, these don't even have a space saver, you can't evem option one, it's tube of guber or nothing. I now need to call work and tell them I'll be late because my flat tyre has limited kms and I need to get it replaced ASAP. I get back in, hot and bothered now, but the A/C isn't very strong, and it's an Australian Summer, so I drive it off to get the flat replaced, hot, bothered, embarrassed, annoyed, disappointed and.........running out of fuel now because the fuel tank is tiny and the car needs plenty throttle to accelerate to safe merging speeds etc.
Anyways, that's how I feel about the Fiesta, and yes, I have driven them enough to have formed a strong opinion about them in this way. Can't say I've driven a Barina, but I DO know that neither are sports cars, neither have hot versions, if you're driving either of them fast enough for understeer, you bought the wrong car.
Get a Focus, a trillion times better.
