Oh yeah, better pic:

 

um... ewww.

 

Ha I agree.

Plus I love the lens they take the pictures with to give it a larger feel. Just give us a straight picture of the back. No fancy camera lens.

I don't like the way its configured. The positioning of the rear seats in the down position give it a 30-45 degree angle. Plus the fact the bottom of the seats are elevated compared to the rest of the rear compartment floor. I have two dogs and often carry both of them and their cages in the back of the Fit. Without the lay flat feature this would be pretty much impossible in the Fiesta.

 

It's like the backseats were an afterthought.

Design guy: Alright, Fiesta is Done!!! Look at all this room!
Mail guy walking by: Wow, the back seats hide so well, I can't even see them when their folded down.
Design guy: Seats?!? Oh shit. You know where I can get some small ass bench seats?
Mail guy: Dude, I'm the mail guy.

I'm starting to see a trend here with the photos of the Fiesta... or lack of. They don't want people to see photos of the rear cargo area... anyone looking for a flat floor will surely be disappointed. Anyone looking for some simple aesthetics in the rear... will be disappointed. It's either that fabric or the color, makes it look odd to me. Anyone looking for cargo capacity... well, they're just flat out looking at the wrong car.

Personally, if I was shopping for a small car and I completely ignored the cargo capacity... just that picture alone would make me turn away from the Fiesta. That folding rear seat (and the way it sticks up) is something I would expect of a car built some 30 years ago... not in 2010.

 

I don't even understand that AD comparision. Why not use an Odyssey and a Fiesta? To me, they are different cars, also.

 

I was an engineer in Dearborn for Ford in the 80's. I can bet you that the one guy who worked on the fold-down seats didn't even talk to the guy who worked on the rear deck until the car was going into experimental build. That's just the way things are done. Most is "afterthought".

 

not everyone is going to care about the cargo room advantages. However, I considered the poor design of the Versa's cargo area to be an inidcation of the overall quality of the vehicle. And likewise for the Fit's well thought out design.

I like the Fiesta's cargo design a bit more than the versa's (less flappy material), but it still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I can imagine the fiesta engineers not really coming up with any win/win ideas, so they just did the best they could and moved on. The carpet doesn't seem to fit and the wheel well bulges are clunky- I wouldn't enjoy packing my gear in this car either.

I do like the red interior! I hope the fiesta does well, and forces honda to add more options.

 

It looks like the same type of folding seat design as most hatches - the gas tank under the front seats is unique to Honda - there are three main ways to do a folding seat if you have a gas tank to deal with:

1. Put a hinge on the front edge of the rear seat, so that it can flip forward, making room for the seatback to flatten. This requires a great deal of rear seat footwell space, as well as a reasonably hump-free rear footwell.

2. Get it as flat as you can without moving the bottom. This is what most hatches do.

3. Raise the floor behind the rear seat with a "cargo tray" or something like that. It sacrifices space, but allows them to claim foldflat seats.

 

I would image that also doing a dual build of a hatchback and regular sedan also compromises the hatchback build somewhat.

 

wow those videos prove nothing! it has more space than a lambo and a civic? im pretty sure any hatch should... keyless ignition? cause its so hard to put a key in a hole and turn it when a zombie is chasing you..

/rant

 

Either I'm becoming an out of touch old fogey, or those ads were really really bad. And right now, I'm not sure if push button starting is really that awesome of a thing with the toyota troubles of recent. A mechanical power cutoff is a safety feature in my mind.

 

It's just like all the "Swap your ride" commercials. They are so stupid and so obviously fake it makes me sick. It hurts their perception more than helps I personally think.

 

I knew I made the right choice

 

Yeah, I don't understand the adds either. I like idea of getting to know the car better, but those clips were bad. Obviously they were made for fun though.

As for the safety of the push button over 'mechanical'- it would seem to me that we are long past the days of the key being a physical link in the ignition circuit of the car. I would imagine all ignitions these days are wired directly to a CPU, whether it is a button or key. The CPU is going to think what it wants to think, regardless of the key's position.

 

I still luv me Fit ~~

 

It's an advertising campaign -- what do you expect? A little snarky (like the Apple ads), but they're going for the "real people" approach. I always thought that Honda's web site for the Fit was pretty cheesy, and the "Fit is Go!" theme was just plain weird, although I did enjoy the Fierce Defender video.

I noticed that virtually all the "good stuff" on the Fiesta is optional at added cost -- I wonder what a fully optioned Fiesta goes out the door for? Not that I would have minded paying extra for heated seats in the Fit. Or a center console (which I did).

 

I doubt it would be to the detriment of the hatch. It's not unusual for carmakers to tack a trunk onto a funky little hatch to create a fugly sedan for the US market... For example, Echo, Aerio, Swift/Metro, SX4. The proportions are all out of sync, but for some reasons, Americans want a notchback.

The Echo was a hideous car here, but the Hatch upon which it was based was pretty cool.



(that is the RS model - it was briefly offered with a TRD blown engine producing 160ish HP... In a 2000 lbs car. More fun than a bag of Shakiras, i'd say!)

 

I can't say the RS hatch looks like much of an improvement on the Echo, which was the cheapest looking Toyota since the Starlet. Both were inexpensive cars, and they looked it.




The first generation Prius was also pretty fugly -- kind of makes you appreciate the improvement with the 2nd and 3rd generation Prius.

 

I always theorized that the old Echo was produced solely to "break the market in" to the ugliness of the 1st gen Prius. Seems like it worked.

 

Clarkson's review gives a good sense of how much cargo space there is. Not sure why he likes it so much compared to some of it's competition, including the Fit (which they've hardly given notice to), but that's the sensationalist nature of the program now. The euro suspension could be tuned differently as well.

Sorry about the subtitles - this is the highest quality version of the episode I could find: YouTube - Top Gear - Ford Fiesta review - sub ITA