But get it, eventually, and the tight and frisky Fiesta lets you easily feel the weight transfer that lies at the core of rally driving slips and slides. Eventually, more skills are added to this left-foot braking business, including transitions and threshold braking. Then, you tie it all together with a pendulum turn, which requires you to execute about 7 individual maneuvers in the time it takes the average person to sneeze. Thing is, when you get it right once, you’ll get it right again, and the Fiesta’s feedback and responsiveness lets you sense, straight away, what works and what doesn’t when it comes to precisely drifting a front-drive car around in the snow.
Rally-racing champ and all-around cool guy Andrew Comrie Picard knows what works and what doesn’t when it comes to rally driving. On a hot lap of O’Neil’s rally course in Comrie Picard’s built Fiesta, he told me about how, even at stock power output, Fiesta makes a wicked-fast rally racer in the snow – and largely because of the light, frisky and responsive feel Ford built into the thing. (I’m sure the nasty-looking snow-racing tires with huge studs helped, too.)
Comrie Picard was saying some other things too, but since we were flying through the air, sideways, pitched, and at some ridiculous speed with trees just feet from the Fiesta’s bumpers, I didn’t hear him over the 10-second F-bombs I was yelling into my helmet.
Rally driving is neat, because it’s real. In racetrack racing, you sort of just get the corners right, and keep doing it. In rally driving, things change constantly, and you’ve got to adapt. This is real-life stuff, and having a quick-to-respond car that talks to you, not a beige appliance engineered primarily to a price point, seems to be a key success factor.
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Warranty: 3 years/60,000 km; 5 years/100,000 km powertrain; 5 years/unlimited distance corrosion perforation; 5 years/100,000 km 24-hour roadside assistance Competitors (Fiesta): Competitors (Focus): |
In real life, most Fiesta owners won’t use those characteristics to fly sideways over a hill crest into a left-hand pendulum turn while smashing gear shifts on a sequential dog-box transmission, but they will smile, wide and often, if they get the chance to push it a little on their favourite back roads, or on a Sunday lapping session at their favorite road course.
Ford’s two global compacts are available for test drives now.
Pricing: 2015 Ford Fiesta
S Sedan: $15,349
S Hatchback: $15,349
SE Sedan: $16,349
SE Hatchback: $16,349
Titanium Sedan: $20,199
Titanium Hatchback: $20,199
ST Hatchback: $24,949
Pricing: 2015 Ford Focus
S Sedan: $16,799
SE Sedan: $19,199
SE Hatchback: $19,199
Titanium Sedan: $26,249
Titanium Hatchback: $26,249
ST Hatchback: $30,349
Electric Hatchback: $35,449
Crash Test Results:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)
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