We talked briefly the other week about marketers and their promises of panacea, and we came to the conclusion that the new Mustang is an excellent car for life on the Prairies. But what about life in the city? Although Canadian cities are understandably sprawling due to our nation’s expansive and largely horizontal geography, there are pockets of density that require a different kind of car. The Mustang we drove recently, with its 412 horsepower, would surely be asphyxiated in the concrete jungle of an urban metropolis, so Ford has introduced the Fiesta. This is the car that was designed for the city, y’know, the kind where most of us actually live in day-to-day, and not the closed circuit race track we dream of when purchasing cars with sporting intentions. The Fiesta, then, is a car for the real world. Not that any of this is news to our European friends, where the Fiesta has been sold for decades. But gas prices have always been high there, making small cars perennially attractive; it was only the recent increase in the price of petroleum in North America that made it viable for Ford to bring the Mexican party to Canada.
Being a 20-something downtown-dweller and a despiser of suburban life, I almost certainly fall into the key demographic that small cars like the Fiesta aims to seduce. That being said, I’m also a member of the iPod generation and a person accustomed to the democratization of luxury, leaving the Fiesta with a tall order to fill in terms of feature content and bang-for-the-buck. A Chevy Aveo isn’t going to cut the mustard. The petite Fiesta counters my sense of entitlement with voice-activated SYNC, heated leather seats, a 5-speed manual, and a mould-breaking design that gives it a certain joie de vivre. But the true test of the Fiesta will be to see if it is any better than my current urbanite steed, a 2002 Mazda Protege5.