Ford should bring back the Fiesta. Oh no it shouldn't!
Bringing back the Ford Fiesta is a genius move, or a potential catastrophe
The Ford Fiesta is as big a name as they come in the car world, particularly in the UK where the supermini was a perennial best seller for decades. Now it's dead, off sale and only available on the used car market but we've discovered that there's more than a flicker of interest within Ford in bringing it back.
The question is, should Ford reanimate its small car icon for the electric car age or would it do better to look to the future? Editor Paul Barker, and editor-at-large Phil McNamara, have differing views on the subject that they outline below but which side of the Fiesta fence are you on? Let us know in the comments...
"Everything about the Ford Fiesta's return makes sense"
By Paul Barker, editor
As someone who has spent a couple of years explaining why Ford was right to kill off the Fiesta, it’s now entirely correct that I bang the drum for its return.
Everything about this makes sense – if Ford can make money. Which was why the last one had to die; it wasn’t bringing in enough cash to justify its existence. Nobody cans profitable projects, but producing millions of Fiesta simply to appease people who would be sad that it’s not around any more isn’t sound business. Sell as many cars as you like; if you’re not making any money on them, it’s pointless.
But teaming up with Volkswagen makes sense; two traditional giants of the automotive world helping each other fight back against the invading forces of cheaper electric competition.
Stellantis has the economy of scale to produce small electric cars across multiple badges, and Dacia’s stripped-back offering makes it easier to hit lower price points. But Ford, and to a lesser extent Volkswagen, require help to get the volumes to make the sums add up.
Ford also really needs some good news. It’s missed the boat on everything from SUVs to EVs in the past decade or so, and the thought of it sitting watching from the side as brand after brand gets stuck into the sub-£25k electric car sector is a bit sad – especially if it’s pointing to a £30k Puma Gen-E as a good enough entry point to its EV range.
If Ford is going to flourish in the electric era, it needs real, credible mass-market cars that people will love. The Fiesta is one of those models that everyone has a memory of, a car that worms its way into daily life. Ford is in real danger of losing its place in the nation’s heart, and unlike the controversial resurrection of the Capri, a sub-£25,000 electric Fiesta would be an appropriate return for an already much-missed nameplate.
A partnership with VW is the only way I can see the company pulling it off, though. Without it, Ford’s future line-up just looks a little bare. Make it happen!
"Ford should leave the supermini fray to Dacia, BYD and VW"
By Phil McNamara, editor-at-large
The Fiesta has been Ford’s latter-day Model T, the car that gave Europeans the freedom of mobility in the 1910s and ‘20s. To Britons, it’s still hard to contemplate a market without the Fiesta, the best driving supermini bar none up until production ended in 2023.
I hail from Essex. My first girlfriend had a Mk2, her mum a fuel-injected XR2i. Even my mum’s last car was a sixth-generation, burgundy red Fiesta. Ford was the go-to brand of my formative years.
But I think bringing the Fiesta back could be a big mistake, and it all comes down to economies of scale. JATO Dynamics reckons Europeans bought two-million hatches in the ‘supermini’ B-segment last year – and 2.46-million B-SUVs. Not much more than a decade ago, there was no such thing as a B-SUV; no Nissan Juke or Ford Puma.
So the market has splintered but competition remains intense: Volkswagen Polo, Renault Clio, Vauxhall Corsa, MINI, Peugeot 208, Toyota Yaris and so on. And while Stellantis, the Volkswagen Group and the Renault-Nissan Alliance can pool volume, Ford of Europe is on its own. Attempts to take the Fiesta global failed; too small for America, too costly for emerging markets.
“The Fiesta is too expensive for the rest of the world,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told me a year ago. “To be successful, you either need a local government supporting you in the B-car business, or you need to have global scale. And if you have global scale, the centre of the market is not Europe. It's South America, Africa and the Middle East – and the cost base is half what it is in Europe.”
Could Ford get sufficient scale by partnering with Volkswagen Group? It’s clearly being discussed, and VW would love to share the burden of the MEB-Entry architecture with Ford. But it’s telling that stablemates SEAT, Skoda and Audi don’t see a way to get involved in the project.
And there’s another huge blocker for Jim Farley. “We’re always open for business, we’re working with Volkswagen [on the Explorer and Capri which use VW’s MEB electric car platform]. But opportunities like this are more complex than meets the eye.
“Anyone who says we can all share is overlooking our industry’s digital software complexity. One of my biggest bets as CEO is my platforms and that includes our electric architectures. There will be places where we work together like MEB. But in the future that will be harder, not easier.”
Writing the software that delivers differentiated Ford features – like it’s nailed with Ford Transit digital services that monitor vehicle health, driver behaviour and real-time tracking – becomes so much harder. And as the industry totally embraces Software Defined Vehicles, a compromised Fiesta just won’t make an impact.
So Ford should stick to its guns, and leave the supermini fray to budget supremos such as Dacia, and whizzy EVs like the forthcoming BYD Dolphin Surf – not to mention VW’s own ID.2. Let Ford focus on its survival plan for the rest of the European passenger car market…
Let us know your thoughts on the Ford Fiesta's potential return in the comments section below...
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