When I was a kid, one of my favourite movies was Little Big Man, the classic anti-establishment western about a short in stature pioneer boy who is raised by the Cheyenne nation. His acts of bravery and wise deeds ( far beyond his limited stature) earned him the name of “Little big man”
I have often reflected on this story growing up, when I came up against an obstacle far greater than I could seem to manage, I would oft wonder to myself if I had dealt with it as a Little big Man or a big little man –if you get my drift…
Anyway, when my mate, the rather larger than life Tank Coetzee, (who happens to be the boss at Midland Ford in beautiful old Graaff Reinet) suggested that he had a rather interesting car for me to test drive, I was more than a little curious and excited, as I had seen the gleaming Focus ST’s standing on his showroom floor as well as the big brutish Ranger bakkies and was kinda hoping that he was talking about one of those
Not really being a small car freak, imagine my delight when Tank presented me with a tiny little Fiesta with a miniscule 1L engine under the hood – Not!
I had a road trip planned and was wondering how the hell I was going to survive 2000 odd Km’s with my wife and our kit in this ridiculous little thing. Even better was the fiery reception I received from dearly beloved when I got home and announced that this was to be our chariot for the trip.
At R211 200 for the Trend (i.e. well kitted out ) version– it is one of the most expensive of the Fiesta range. Even the 1.6 diesel variant is about 10 grand cheaper.
Nice one Tank!
When I popped the hood to see what was lurking beneath, I was hardly inspired further. The miniscule little 3 cylinder 1.0L Ecoboost unit looks like something straight out of a Singer sewing machine factory. It barely fills the already tiny engine bay and looks like it can be manhandled in or out of it by a small child. Oi Vey!! What a road trip this was going to be.
As the first part of our trip involved me having to drop another test vehicle off in PE, Wifey and I had to travel in two separate vehicles, meet up in PE and then continue together. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to drive the other vehicle and sent the missus to PE in the midget, whilst I cruised along in my much larger off roader. ( I had to do gravel road testing along the way OK!)
Imagine my surprise when I got to PE that afternoon, expecting fire and brimstone from the Madam, only to find the wife as chipper as a politician after winning a tender and smiling from ear to ear after her 260KM drive.
Not wanting to stir the hornets’ nest and being a firm believer in the “leaving well enough alone” theory, I hopped in and, as I do, with my 6ft2” frame, adjusted the driver’s seat to the furthest back position. I imagine my surprise when I then couldn’t reach the pedals. What the…!!??
Once I had moved my seat a notch or two forward, I noted that the car wanted to talk to my phone, OK cool, at least there is blue tooth, while fiddling through the options I also noted with delight that it also had the full FORD SYNC infotainment system installed. Even better, now we could listen to our own music stored on our phones through the Bluetooth system and have a range of other cool gadgets to keep us going during the trip.
It also has some other nice kit like hill start assist, keyless entry, and a nifty “MyKey” system which allows you to program certain functions of the car to only allow certain things for certain drivers. So now you can lend the car to the kids but program it to only start if the seatbelts are clipped in or limit the speed that it can go or even manage how loud the sound system can be turned up.
Things were looking up, despite the prospect of having to travel to Cape Town with a weed eater motor under the hood.
So we eased out of the petrol station forecourt into the traffic and trundled along at slug speed through the lunch time traffic up Cape Road until my patience was shot – by the millionth red robot – where I lost my cool with a fast lane crawler. (You know the one who jumps in front of you at the intersection and then proceeds to pootle along at crawling pace in the fast lane and have everyone behind them jumping on their brakes so hard their eyeballs pop out, oblivious to the fact that they are causing absolute mayhem with the traffic behind)
Anyway, at this point this country boy was gatvol and instinct kicked in. I cursed softly under my breath, found a gap, dropped a gear and stomped the loud pedal, remembering only then, that my car had an engine that would easily fit onto a biltong slicer and in the same millisecond realising that I was about to make a complete ass of myself when (as is the norm with pea sized engined vehicles) some noise emanated from the bonnet but nothing else actually happened and there I would be, still revving the guts out of my poor car like a Saturday night teenager converting petrol into noise , breathing fire and brimstone at the ass in front but still stuck behind him because my flipping car had gone to the gunfight armed with a knife…
With this in mind, imagine my surprise when this little Fiesta, against all that is rational and sane, shot off the mark like it had just sat on a wasp, thundered past Mr Ass and we were weaving through the traffic like a go cart racer on steroids. I even got a bit of torque steer through the front wheels. WTF!
I was gobsmacked.
By the time we hit the highway, I had a smile bigger than Khulubuse Zuma’s bum. This little sucker is a pocket rocket of note.
When I did some homework on the car, I discovered that the little Ecoboost motor has a whopping 92kW’s on tap. Now to put this in perspective, a Ferrari 458 with its world beating 4.5L V8 motor kicks out 419kW, which equates to 93kW per litre. A Lamborghini Aventador with its giant killing 6.5L V12 (515 kW) only kicks out 79kW’s per litre.
This little Fiesta has 92kW’s per litre. In theory if you built the same motor out to 4.5 L you would get 414 kW’s and if you took it to 6.5L you would have 598 kW – It’s just crazy
Ford also claim that you can achieve around 4,5l/100km with this little unit, which in theory is do-able, if you drive like my mother…
Realistically though, I achieved an average of 6l/100km on our road trip, this figure is real world driving, including stop start traffic, freeway cruising, high speed overtaking and the usual city traffic interspersed with the odd “I’ve just sat on a wasp” moment.
I was much pleased with this.
Though, if you really want to drive frugally with this little baby, the results are amazing. My wife demonstrated this very well just before I returned the vehicle to Tank when she took my son to a school gala in a neighbouring town and forgot to fill up.
She called me in a panic, 60 km from home saying that the tank range was only 23 km. I asked what speed she was driving and she indicated that she was doing the national limit of 120km/h. I told her to slow down to 100km/h and see how she went, if things did not improve, I’d come with some fuel. To both our surprise and delight, she arrived home about 40mins later with the tank range reading 53km to empty.
As Chad le Clos’s old man put it, “Unbelievable!!!”
This Fiesta truly is a little big man.
Ford New-Fiesta Suggested Retail Prices
Model Excl. VAT Incl. VAT
Incl. Environment Tax Incl. Environment Tax
Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Titanium 203,070 R231,500
Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Trend 185,263 R211,200
Fiesta 1.4 Ambeinte 144,474 R164,700
Fiesta 1.4 Trend 164,825 R187,900
Fiesta 1.6 TDCi Ambiente 156,491 R178,400
Fiesta 1.6 TDCi Trend 176,667 R201,400
