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Ford Fiesta (India) Duratec Petrol – Road test and review

I had test driven the Ford Fiesta 1.6 SXi petrol variant last month and written a detailed review of this awesome vehicle at Mouthshut. As usual, I am just posting the excerpts from that review here.

The Ikon legacy continues

Ford Ikon was a super-successful model in India. To be frank, I haven’t enjoyed driving any other vehicle in India as much as an Ikon (Read about my Ford Ikon experience. The trademark of an Ikon – despite its incompleteness in many build aspects – was its exceptional drivability. It’s a true drivers car and so is the Ford Fiesta!

ford-fiesta-india-1.6-duratec-sxi-petrol

The car I chose to test drive as the SXi variant though the sporty S variant was available for test drive as well. Basically, I wanted to feel the family sedan experience as against the sports variant as I presumed that the S variant with low-profile tires will offer bumpy ride.

The following are the highlights of my test drive (more in my detailed review as per the link below)

Major plus points

  • Great to drive car – excellent handling
  • Low turning radius
  • Good features at this price – electric ORVMs, 2-din music system, semi-leather seating, ABS, Airbags
  • Good gear ratios (along with low turning radius makes great city driving)
  • Reasonable mileage and good power for the price

Improvement areas

  • A bit outdated looks
  • Poor plastic quality at places
  • Uncomfortable, straight backseats
  • No alloy wheels
  • Poor tire dimensions

Overall, it’s an exceptional car for the price at which it comes (with all those current discounts) and my rating is 4/5.

For the complete review, please read Ford Fiesta review.

Happy motoring!

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Ford Ikon – In a league of its own

I have been fascinated by cars and bikes from a very young age. I always watched, studied and admired them along with the various aspects of automobile engineering from my childhood. We did not have any car or bike in my house at that time and hence never got to try my hands on those coveted machines (if you can call them so) of that era. My first hands-on with a bike was at the age of 7 whereby I tried to ride my uncle’s Luna (do you remember that moped?) and got nice scolding and a couple of whacks for the same.

After I got my first job, the very first thing I did was to buy a bike. I, in fact, bought a Royal Enfield Machismo at that time – which was obviously a little too much for my thin frame :). After moving to the US for about three years, I got to experiment with a lot of good quality cars but most of them were auto-transmission models.

Coming back to India in 2001, gave me the opportunity to experiment with various nice cars. Since I always preferred driver’s cars over those who looked great or provided good mileage, I picked Maruti Zen as my first car in India. It was an awesome car to drive but I was yearning for more and hence in 2004-’05 I switched to a Ford Ikon 1.6 Petrol which, at that time, was probably the best driver’s car in India.

Ford Ikon 1.6 Review

Though, I have been writing car reviews here and there, I thought of organizing my auto reviews a little bit and hence started publishing them on my blogs. Unfortunately, some of them got closed due to other blogging priorities and hence I moved some of my reviews to Mouthshut.com.

My Ford Ikon review on Mouthshut is the first organized and complete review of that kind. You may please read the review and provide your feedback there itself. At some point, I plan to consolidate all my reviews on this blog.

Happy Motoring!