Ford's zippy Fiesta impressive, but is the price right?

This summer, Ford of Canada will charge more than $23,000 for a fully loaded Fiesta, a new subcompact smaller than the Ford Focus.

That car will be the Fiesta with all the luxury stuff and pretty much all the 15 technologies not typically found in subcompact cars -- including keyless entry, pushbutton start and Ford's Sync wireless communications and entertainment technology.

On the other hand, sources tell me that the base version of the Fiesta will come in under $13,000. Here's hoping Ford manages to start the 2011 Fiesta at something closer to $12,499, but I think $12,999 is more likely.

Still, below $13,000, the car has a chance against the likes of the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Hyundai Accent and Nissan Versa.

It will help Ford's costs to build the Fiesta not in the U.S. or Canada, but in Ford's Cuautitlan, Mexico plant. But even with lower-cost Mexican labour screwing things together, Ford believes it can sell a premium-priced small car in a market long dominated by penny pinchers.

"The price is out there, and we already have 1,000 orders," said Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of global marketing, said about American pre-sales. "Americans have shown us if we bring out aspirational products, not only will they pay the base price, but go up."

Ford Canada is holding off naming dollar figures for now, but in the U.S., the 2011 Fiesta will start at $13,995 including shipping for the four-door sedan. The base five-door Fiesta starts at $15,795. The Focus starts at $16,535 including shipping. So as you can see, there is not a huge price gap between the Fiesta and the bigger but older design of the Focus.

Notoriously cheap Canadians are careful to spend only what they must on new cars, a fact transplanted American car executives often fail to appreciate for years after they arrive here. It may be true, as Farley has said, that upscale American consumers want fuel efficiency and high-tech gadgets. But we generally want fuel efficiency and a manageable monthly payment more.

And even if the Fiesta has been proven as a military beach assault vehicle by Britain's Top Gear television show, it will always be the monthly payment that scores best with entry-level Canadians. So notwithstanding its toughness and good looks, its high-tech features and nifty handling, Ford of Canada has some educating and explaining to do before June.

And that's why Ford has been so busy on the Internet, networking on Facebook and Twitter, banging the drum at grass-roots media events and getting the word out to dealers and their sales people. During the first round, the Fiesta Movement accounted for 5.9 million YouTube views, 3.3 million Twitter impressions and 1.4 million miles driven, said Farley.

That's the good news. The tricky bit is that Ford hasn't aspired to sell an entry-level small car since, well, the made-in-Korea Ford Aspire which mercifully went away in the late 1990s. If you don't remember that car, it looked like a shoebox with roller skate wheels, but wasn't quite as fast and was certainly less attractive than a real shoebox.

Ford Canada's biggest challenge is to make dealership employees understand small cars, their buyers and how to sell to them. The dealers, who have for most of the last decade been selling pickups and sport-utilities, dealers for whom cars have only a sideline offering, are now being asked to convey the ideas behind European design, handling and technology -- what sets the Fiesta apart from its competitors.

The dealerships better be ready. Ford is planning a second round of "Fiesta Movement" social-media activities early this year and if it works, the dealerships will find themselves talking about cars to potential customers.

Many who want to know more about Fiesta will already know all sorts of details about the car. Some will have watched Jeremy Clarkson's "test" from Top Gear, and others will remember that the last time Ford sold a Fiesta in North America was the early 1980s -- before many budding buyers were born.

Ford will certainly have to explain why the Canadian and U.S. versions of the Fiesta will share only 60 per cent of its parts with its brethren in Europe.

Our Fiesta will have a different transmission and wheels, wider seats, bigger bumpers and brakes with a softer touch. Some of the changes are to meet different regulatory requirements on this side of the Atlantic, while others are for North American tastes. The biggest fear many have is that Ford will "dumb" down the European Fiesta, making it too soft and too uninteresting to drive.

"Our first message (about the Fiesta) was, 'There's this car called Fiesta, and it's cool,'" Farley said at last month's Los Angeles Auto Show. "Now we're going to show what Fiesta does differently from Yaris, Fit and Corolla."

Leaving out the Corolla, what the Fiesta does better than the other two is sell in big numbers in Europe. Ford won't say exactly how many Fiestas it hopes to sell annually in North America, but on the other side of the pond, the Fiesta has become the second-best selling car behind the Volkswagen Golf. In fact, Ford has sold more than 500,000 Fiestas in Europe and China since the new model went on sale in Europe in October 2008.

Ford types have also divulged that they expect to sell more than one million vehicles globally per year off the Fiesta platform. Say, by 2012. Some sort of small SUV will surely round out that big number.

"The importance of Fiesta for the company cannot be overstated," Farley said.

Or as Marin Burela, Ford's executive director of small cars, puts it: The new Fiesta is the "most significant global vehicle project since the Ford Model T."

Driving the 2010 Ford Fiesta

A few years back I had a chance in Britain to drive the previous-generation Fiesta. It was a good and popular car in the U.K. I liked the way it drove, but its dowdy appearance embarrassed me when I was behind the wheel.

Ford of Europe design director Martin Smith feels his people have solved that problem with Kinetic Design, which is the buzz phrase for the company's design language in Europe. The Kinetic elements were first seen in the Verve concept car shown at the Frankfurt auto show.

This Fiesta is a looker. The angular, oversized headlights, the pert rump and prominent shoulder line -- nothing dowdy about this shape.

The cabin is just as bold as the exterior, too. Take the centre console. Smith says it was inspired by cell phone design, which means some will find it flashy but fiddly to use. Materials inside and out look and feel good. Also, the Fiesta, four-door hatchback or four-door sedan, has enough room inside for four adults and a decent trunk.

In driving, the new Fiesta is solid on all accounts, other than the electrically assisted power steering. It's not quite as crisp as the rest of the chassis, though I have yet to drive a full North American-spec production car. My tests have been in imports, even though some were dressed up to look and behave like the cars coming to our showrooms.

Look, the Fiestas I've driven would rank first in their class for handling and ride quality if pitted against the Honda Fits, Toyota Yarises and Nissan Versas in Canadian showrooms now. Ford officials when they swear up and down that our version of the Fiesta will be a really excellent ride -- not a "dumbed-down" European Fiesta at all.

For the record, the suspension is a familiar combination of MacPherson struts in front with a torsion-beam solid axle in the rear. Ford knows how to tune this setup, and has been doing so quite well for years.

For power, we'll get a 118-horsepower, 1.6-litre gasoline engine and it's good -- smooth revving, powerful enough for city-hopping and so forth.

But if fuel economy really matters, Ford should eventually get around to selling the Ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi, the flagship model in Europe. It has a 1.6-litre inline-four turbocharged diesel that offers 89 horsepower and fabulous 150 pound-feet of torque.

The Fiesta with this engine is not only strong, but gets better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid. Moreover, this version of the Fiesta spews out just 110 grams per km of carbon dioxides, which is almost a match for the Prius at 104. Europeans also get an Econetic version that emits under 100 g/km.

So Ford is only bringing in part of the full Fiesta lineup sold in Europe - and one modified to meet our safety standards and buyer demands. That means our 2011 Fiesta will have a comfortable and controlled chassis, lots of features, bigger and likely softer seats and a very stylish design, inside and out.

Put it all together and this ranks as a good development for small car buyers in Canada-- if Ford manages to nail the price.