Winston Churchill once stated “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Maybe not as profound, but Sheryl Crow also proclaimed that a “change will do you good.” During my time with the Ford Fiesta, I couldn’t help but think about how change can be profound. The car itself is a reflection of how subcompacts, and specifically Ford’s subcompacts, have modernized in the past twenty years. During the first initial years of the last decade, I was fortunate enough to own a used 1995 Ford Aspire during college. It was a cheap set of wheels that I had earned after an arduous summer of busing tables and I was proud to have the aspiring little car. For those of you who can’t recall the Aspire, it filled the minicar gap in Ford’s lineup left behind by the Festiva and was a Mazda design built by the fine folks at Kia in South Korea. It was a cheery enough design and surprisingly flaunted the best velour seats I have ever encountered in any car. Not only that, this particular Aspire was luxurious by mid-1990’s subcompact standards, boasting every option available; power steering, a cassette radio, air conditioning, a rear defroster, and those terrific seats. Some of these weren’t available on the Aspire’s direct competitors or standard on some larger cars of the time. But when it came to performance, the Aspire was a dog. A little 1.3 liter with 63 horsepower could barely tote the small car around and a three-speed automatic would lurch while handling the timid power delivery. And forget about power windows, cruise control, or power mirrors; they were unobtainable on any Aspire. Yes sir, driving around in the comparably sized, and marketed, contemporary Fiesta was a reflection on how much has changed.
Filed under: Ford | Tagged: cassette radio, ford aspire, ford fiesta, mazda design, rear defroster, set of wheels | Leave a comment »
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