Fiesta Ole or OK?

MK1 Ford Fiesta in racing trim.

I was excited when I first heard Ford was bringing the Fiesta back to the US. To say we Americans got short changed in the small car department is an understatement. This slight is made all the worse when manufactures make a small car Americanized with vague steering and sloppy handling trying to emulate a pint sized Grand Marquise . If you want to make something desirable you don’t make it a poor copy of something else. This attitude has to be one of the contributing factors to American’s disdain of small cars. To the average American a small car is something you settle for or reluctantly return to when gas prices spike. It’s like that fat chick at the bar at closing time, a last ditch desperation play until your luck changes.

But surely the new MINI changed all that, maybe Americans have turned a corner in their thinking. Maybe a small, chuckable car will win hearts and open doors to a flood of fun to drive little cars. Maybe we will even make amends and resurrect the Escort RS Mexico, the Datsun 510 and the BMW 2002, but that’s just crazy talk.

My mind raced back to the mid-eighties when this impoverished 20 year old car nut test drove a 1980 Ford Fiesta MK1 with a hot cam, header, big weber carburetor and XR2 suspension. This tarted up tin box was listed in a classified ad in the Norfolk, Virginia newspaper. Back then I wasn’t above projecting myself as a person to be taken seriously in order to drive interesting cars (now the deception, robbed of the shining potential of youth, is harder to pull off). The performance parts that graced the Fiesta were from a little hooligans company called BAT (British American Transfer) Limited. They sold performance parts for Fiestas and Escorts that turned your American-ized compact Ford into what God meant it to be; a temperamental, back road terrier with a slight cough. More on the good people at BAT some other time.

I arrived at the prearranged meeting spot, the parking lot of a neighborhood tavern, and saw the little white Fiesta sitting there on slightly fat tires gleaming in the afternoon sun. I always liked small cars in white; it really made them seem minimalistic, like the light shade of paint was some desperate, neurotic weight shaving effort. Its stance was a little lower and wider than a normal Fiesta, but not extreme. Out back twin chrome exhaust tips gave the slightest hint that somebody was putting some love into what was normally considered a throw-away car. The overall effect was a coiled spring straining to burst forth into motion. The Fiesta aped the first generation VW Rabbit with its angular hatch back styling, razor thin A pillars and blunt front and rear ends. The Fiesta had a lighter more sparing look like the metal embodiment of the question; how much do you really need to call something a car? The interior was the same, there were seats, yeah, just seats, and a stick protruding from the floor without counsel, boot or fanfare to select one of four forward gears. This Fiesta was a sport model because it came graced with a factory installed tachometer to keep track of the little 1.6 liter Kent engine’s attempts to propel you forward. As an added bonus you would never forget your exterior color choice while driving as the interior had as much painted metal as it had imitation vinyl. If you needed to see if the motor was still there you opened the Fiesta’s front hinged hood to see its tiny little engine starring up at you like opening a bathroom stall to have a person say meekly, “I’m in here.”

If it sounds like I’m disparaging the little car, I’m not, rather I’m extolling its virtues. For me there has always been an irresistible allure to the small, light and cheap car. I don’t know what it is, I’m not a hypermiler trying to squeeze every last mile from a tank of gas, in fact I say let the fossil fuel party ride like its 1999. I’m also not the proud to be poor, granola sucking hippy type either. I like money and even if I had it I would still look to dump hopeless amounts of cash importing some Escort RS or Peugeot 205 GTi into the states. No I think these small, light cars have that playful, even slightly dangerous feeling like a rickety carnival ride that would cause an insurance underwriter to lose bladder control.

As I stood there with my brother who not only shares my DNA but is the only other person on earth who has the same quirky, irrational taste in cars that I do, the owner came up and introduced himself. I don’t remember much about him but that’s typical of me, people I forget but what they drive, never.

The owner told us about the modifications he’d done and his love for European cars. The latter point was why he was selling it; he wanted to buy a slightly used BMW 320. This guy was on the cutting edge of the yuppy curve. As I looked around the car with its aluminum wheels and performance 13 inch tires I was struck at how immaculate it was. “Do you want to hear it run?” he asked. Of course I did but only as a prelude to driving it. You have to ease into these things and not appear too eager like asking a girl out on a date rather than to immediately suggest going back to your place to try out some devises you ordered from the back of a men’s magazine.

He jumped in, twisted the key and the engine growled to life at first with a blat and then settled into a quiet burble. The hood was still open and I watched the throttle articulate the Weber downdraft carburetor as he blipped the gas pedal a few times. The Weber down draft carburetor is a thing of beauty that must have been inspired by angels. Its look conveys its purpose with the singular purity of a spoon combined with the intricate artwork of kinetic sculpture. The only sight that may top it aesthetically is the Weber side draft carburetor. My heart truly grieves for those young car enthusiasts who only know of the robotic efficiency of fuel injection. Perched on top of the Weber was a small, oval, exposed element air cleaner. This set up has one purpose, to get more air into the engine for greater performance, if only government and industry today had so clear and simple a mission statement.

The Weber carb, just look at it!

The owner stepped out of the car and joined my brother and me as we gazed down at the little pushrod four cylinder. “It took some tweaking once I put the cam in and the carburetor on to get it to run this smooth.” The owner said. ‘It runs nice.” I said, conjuring up the full measure of my gift of hyperbole.

“Why don’t you guys take it for a spin?” he asked. The next instant was demonstrative of the nonverbal communication shared by brothers or couples who’ve been married so long they start to look alike. My brother Mike shot me a look and when our eyes met we both knew that I was driving first. I had taken the preemptive course by always remaining on the driver’s side of the car in order to be the one offered the keys, game, set, match.

We both climbed in and I told the owner before slamming the door that we’d be about twenty minutes. I would have taken twenty five if I had any ability to actually purchase the car. I blipped the throttle and the little car growled a response like the sound track from an Italian movie. I reached straight down and my hand fell on the shifter, I moved the stick to first gear and the lever brushed my thigh like it was flirting with me.

The throttle and clutch were a little difficult to modulate smoothly as I eased out of the parking lot and turned onto a side street. The stubby hood, upright seating posture and windshield a foot from your face gave the impression of sitting front row at an iMax movie. Once on the street I stabbed the gas and the little car leapt down the road throwing the horizon at me like a snowball in the face. The manual steering tugged the car to the right as first gear was dispatched instantly and second gear felt like a dog breaking its leash in hot pursuit of a squirrel. At the end of third gear I was doing sixty on a posted thirty five mile per hour road with a stop sign approaching faster than the Grim Reaper at the old folk’s home. I jabbed the brake pedal and my brother’s hands slapped the dash board as my seat belt tensioner took hold and the car came to a dramatic stop. I looked at Mike with a grin that must have mirrored that of Adam when he discovered he and Eve had compatible body parts.

This Fiesta was loud, crude, rode as stiff as a covered wagon and was so devoid of refinement that if you parked next to road kill you could actually listen to it decomposing from inside the car, God I loved it! For the next twenty minutes my brother and I tossed, chucked and hurled the little car through curves and down narrow streets. Even when relegated to the passenger seat I was having a blast although at times I felt I could have tossed, chucked or hurled. If I close my eyes I can still hear the Monza exhaust growl and wail its frenzied song as the little Kent engine left nothing in reserve. I have never had so much fun in a car and yet we never saw 80 miles per hour.

Mike drove the last mile sedately back to the tavern parking lot as we discussed various schemes to come up with the nearly $4000 the owner was asking. Between the two of us, I reasoned, we had four kidneys; did we really need that many and how much would two healthy ones bring on the open market? In the end neither of us had the money, we were both so poor that eating every day seemed extravagant. I admitted to the Fiesta’s owner that I loved the car and then followed up with the biggest blow off response since the first time someone ended a relationship with, “we can still be friends” as I said, “I have to think about it.”

Twenty five years later that test drive in the Fiesta is burned on my brain like a prison tattoo. Since then I think my passion for cars has partly been a quest to recreate that raw, mechanical thrill I got from that little German Ford with the British engine. Like your first beer buzz or your first love everything that follows is a little less thrilling and a little less vivid. Time does have a way of romanticizing past events but truth be told there is no sweeter surprise than going into an experience with your cup of expectations empty and as you get older that becomes a rare thing indeed.

I suppose I could go to the local Ford store and see if they’ll take me seriously enough to offer a test drive in a new Fiesta, but from the reviews I’ve read about it I probably shouldn’t.
Marve Harwell (c) 2011