The new Fiesta, Ford’s blueprint for designing and building a global car, was designed to capture what young Italian buyers described as a “sprinty” car, said Ford of Europe design chief Martin Smith.
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“Sprinty” was a word heard a lot during the research among 25 to 34 year olds. Translating that into design was a challenge that to which Smith thinks his team responded well.
The other word was “athletic” said Smith who revealed that the Verve concept, unveiled at Frankfurt motor show in autumn 2007, was already well on its way to becoming the next Fiesta by that stage. It was more a design project than a concept.
Verve went on to become the most photographed car at last year’s Frankfurt show, he said. No mean feat for a B-segment car.
The other bit of feedback from the Verve design was that everyone loved the colour of the show car – officially known as ‘hot magenta’ but described variously as ‘plum with a touch of pink’ or ‘pinky purple’.
Now Ford has added it as one of 15 new colours for the Fiesta. Smith says it was difficult to get the colour right for the show car. To turn it into a production colour was even more of a challenge.
Currently the forecast is that about 1.5% of buyers might specify their new Fiesta in ‘hot magenta’. Roelant de Waard, chairman of Ford of Britain, reckoned that could be as high as 15% once people start to see the car on the road, pointing to the popularity of the current ST versions of the Fiesta and Focus where a distinctive orange hue is chosen by up to 30% of buyers.
The new Fiesta is expected to give a timely boost to Ford’s European sales with de Waard forecasting 104,000 UK buyers next year, up from 102,870 for current Fiesta in 2007.
He is hoping that about one-third of those buyers will either be new to Ford or returning to the brand. He is also confident that they will be younger than the current average age of 46 for B segment buyers.
One reason to buy new Fiesta, he said, is that it will cost less to own than the existing model over the typical three-year/60,000 miles used for these calculations thanks in part to better used values which work out at being about GBP1,000 more than the existing car after three years.
Sales start in October.
