**This is an older opinion as the car I am driving now is the Fiesta 1.4Ghia which I also have an opinion on. However, I thought this might be of use to some of you, so here you go!!**
We all see them whizzing round the roads, yes, it?s the humble fiesta. My Fiesta is a Mark 2 fiesta, which basically means it was produced between 1983 and 1989, in 1990 they came out with the mark 3 fiesta which has the newer body style. So, mine has the older body style, but wasn't far off having a new one as its F registered. Ahh well, I'm actually quite happy with the older body style. There was the mark 1, which is the even older body style which you still see around, even these days.
I picked my fiesta up for just £150, a bargain I'll have you know! However it had been sitting in a garage for a year and had not gone anywhere in that time. So, it had no MOT, no tax and needed some work doing on it as any car that has been sitting idle for a year would have done. I did actually think that more work would need to be done on it that was actually needed. All it needed infact was an oil change, general service (which was done by my dad and myself) and a new oil filter. After this it was back on the road, well, to the garage for an MOT anyway! Unfortunately it didn't pass the test as there
was some rust under the passenger side door which needed some attention. That was all patched up, a new tire was put on, I handed over my £150 and the car now had an MOT certificate. This is pretty good as it hadn?t been run for a year!
Tax cost me £57 for 6 months as the car has a 1.1 litre engine, so you get cheaper road tax. The only other cost was the insurance, which for me being 20 at the time was £550 for the year 3rd party. Yer, a lot as the car only cost 150 smackers, but oh well, it's needed and I couldn?t get it cheaper anywhere else, so that was that. Now I'm 21 the insurance for it is £490 fully comp and £330 3rd party?.how annoyed am I?! So, £350 and the car was on the road, the insurance is always needed and always bumps up the cost of motoring considerably!
The car has now taken me all over the south west of Britain, I've been all over the place in me little fiesta (I haven?t yet got a name for it, any suggestions appreciated!). It's done a total of 113,000 miles and could easily do it all again I should think. It still runs nicely for the car that it is and can keep up with any new small car on the road with the same size engine, I even make a joke of overtaking my mate who drives a 1.3 fiesta, dunno what's wrong with his car!!
Driving the car won't be the most comfortable drive of your life. In fact you can feel most of the bumps on the road. You also have the noise of the engine, which is very prominent. There is no power steering and there are no extras to assist your driving. This is just a basic car that gets you from A to B. The body roll is quite apparent and can really feel when you have gone round a corner a bit to fast, and to be honest, the handling isn't up to much either. But, on the other hand, you know when you get in the car that it isn't going to give the drive of a BMW and for the car that it is, it gives a nice drive. Acceleration is ok, but your not gonna want to race away from the lights, unless of course your competitor is in one of the new smart cars (nice dig there!). In fact, it's not a case of how long it will take you to hit 60, it's a case of will you actually reach 60!? Nah, it's not that bad and can reach 95 on the motorway, I haven't taken it any further as I would like to live a bit longer yet and the wheels are only 13" would have set alight if I went any faster!
Ok, so onto the problems with the car?
One of the biggest problems with fiestas is rust. Mine isn't doing badly at all, the only bit of rust (now the other has been sorted out) is a slight bit of rust above the rear wheel arch. However, it is commonplace to see fiestas rusting around the wheelarches. I'm not to concerned at all, my fiesta is in a lot better condition that a lot of newer fiestas out there!
The next problem with some of the mark 2 fiestas is the carburetor. There are 3 different carburetors that I know about that are used in the Mark 2 fiestas, depending on what model you have. The VW carburetor is what previously sat in my engine. This carburetor is renown for problems, and was quickly abandoned as the mainstream carb. I now have an SU carb which I picked up from a scrapyard and this works perfect.
The clutch is now on it's way out, but this isn?t really a fault with the car, every car's clutch wears after a while. I wasn't sure whether to get a new clutch or to just get a new car as clutch and fitting normally costs about £300 so I have been told, but my dad has offered to fit it for me, all I need is the 2 clutch parts which will cost me about £50, it's nice to have a dad that knows his cars!! Apart from these, I have had no other problems with the car myself and have done 10,000 miles in it in the space of 6 months. 10,000 miles trouble free motoring out of a pretty old car isn't bad at all in my books!
Now, onto the good things!
The best thing about fiestas is that they are so popular. Ok, your not going to get noticed driving around in yours, apart from the distinctive tinny noise the engine produces. However, the more popular the car is, the easier it is to get parts and also the cheaper it is to get the parts for them. I went out with my dad today as he had to get his car serviced, so I followed him and then we went off to get some car stuff (it's a father and son thing!). I bought some wiper blades for just under £2 for the pair, dad's cost him £16 for the pair. Big difference! (He owns a 4yr old Vauxhall Vectra by the way). I also picked up a can of oil ready for the next oil change. Just under £7 for my Duckhams oil, £25 for dad's performance engine oil. The comparisons go on and on. A new tire will only cost you about £20!
The fuel economy on the car is excellent. I have gone 120 miles on £5, and a full tank which normally costs £28 to fill up will take me about 400 miles and roughly 450 miles on the motorway. Obviously these are a just rough estimations and it all depends on how hard you drive the car!
Also, go into any scrapyard and someone is bound to have wrecked their fiesta or something. So, you'll be able to pick up loads of decent stuff from other fiestas really cheaply! For instance, the carb I picked up cost me just £20 and I also picked up a few other bits for just a fiver.
Overall....I'm happy with my fiesta, it just isn't quite good enough to keep up with what I'm now asking it to do for me. However, because I like the fiesta so much for its reliability and low running costs, I'm looking into getting a new fiesta and have seen a W reg fiesta for under £6000 which looks really nice with the even newer body style ford have come up with. I suppose I'll just have to make the decision
If your looking for a reliable, cheap to run car then I would definitely recommend a fiesta. They go on and on and give you very little problems. However, they don't do all that much for your street cred, unless you get one of the sporty versions or spice it up a bit with some of the accessories that are available! It's a car that gets you to where you want, plain and simple. It's not designed to do anything. Fiestas get a 5 out of 5 from me, especially the 1983-1989 fiestas.
Happy motoring!
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My mates been driving one of these for four years, his mum had it for 7 years before that, so its certainly been reliable. Andy
melonman 14.08.2003 20:52
Great comment and its interesting to see you mentioned the problem of rust which i too have found with my fiesta
sparkydog 03.07.2002 18:16
I remember my mom's C-reg mk2 Fiesta- that rusted around the rear wheelarches too but it was a cool car- the space in the front beats the crap out of many modern superminis with the cut-away dash.
Jun 30th, 2002
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