#FordFiesta

Well, it’s official; the 2014 Ford Fiesta will be the first small American car since the Geo Metro to be powered by a 3-cylinder engine.

The introduction of three-cylinder (and even parallel twin) engines in subcompact and compact cars is a much needed dose of whimsy and engineerng prowess is a segment that is crippled by terminal homogeny. Although we don’t get the Fiat TwinAir powertrain, Ford’s 1.0L 3-cylinder Ecoboost will be coming to our shores, and by the time it goes on sale here, we’ll already have the tools to extract some more juice from the sub-1000cc engine.

Ford won’t be following in the footsteps of Renault and other auto makers that have introduced “low cost” brands like Dacia. But the company hasn’t ruled out a model line of cheaper vehicles either.

We saw a junked first-year Plymouth Horizon last week, but Chrysler’s Simca-based econobox wasn’t the only Euro-Detroito subcompact to make its North American debut in 1978. The first-gen Ford Fiesta, which had been a tremendous sales success in Europe, showed up in American Ford showrooms… where it was met by puzzled stares from car shoppers who couldn’t quite get their heads around the tiny size of the latest car to bear the blue oval.

Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.

For members of the North American Small Car Love Association, this might seem to be a golden age. Lately every manufacturer (with the notable exception of Volkswagen) seems to be taking the B-segment seriously. GM, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Hyundai, and Kia have all recently introduced new or substantially redesigned models. Yet, amidst this orgy, where’s the love? With so many new cars, why aren’t we lusting after ANY of them? Case in point: the 2012 Kia Rio SX.

Can we just get this in a five-door? Even though Fiesta sales aren’t as great as Ford would hope, I quite like this ST version.

The Korean invasion began in the late eighties with three shitboxes: the Hyundai Excel, the Pontiac LeMans, and the Ford Festiva. Korea Week CC pits them against each other to determine the outcome: the Festiva loses the contest by a large margin. Why?

If you regret not buying Ford stock when it was $1, you might want to reconsider even at the current $14. Bloomberg reports that Ford may well report a record third quarter profit of some $1.37 billion, based on the projections of five analysts. Considering that the market is still depressed, some analysts see plenty of potential left on the upside, projecting a possible $20 share price within the next 12 months. The keys to Ford’s success? Here’s just one: the new Fiesta is fetching $3,000 to $4,000 above its $14k base price, because buyers are happily taking them loaded with options. The result is that average transaction prices for the Fiesta are higher than Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas. And the Fiesta is a class smaller. The small cars-can’t-be-sold-profitably-by-Detroit curse has finally been exploded.

For a reviewer, getting handed a car with delivery miles on the odometer is an instant promotion to tribal shaman. You’re given a quick pat on the back before being shoved into a hut with the village’s prettiest virgin. Needless to say, this privilege comes with the sacred duty of keeping the virgin in tip-top shape, otherwise your term as high-muck-a-much will be pretty short-lived. Unfortunately for my political aspirations, the Mazda2 loves being ridden hard. It squeals through corners, snarling like a dog in heat. There’s a lot more fun to be had here than the tiny 185/55R15 Dunlop Sports suggest.