The Fiesta Diesel

“G

eoffrey” was my first diesel car and as such, is therefore technically the original “DervMobile.” Not the first that I had driven by a long shot but the first that I had decided to own. He was a 1990 Ford Fiesta 1·8DL - in other words, the poverty specification diesel mark three Fiesta. Geoff was diamond white in colour, but otherwise lacked any notable items of equipment. It’s easy to list the things it didn’t have that Danielle benefited from: a boot lamp, sunroof, speakers in the rear, heh decent speakers full stop, intermittent front wipers, and wheel trims.

Essentially then the early 1∙8 Fiesta diesel is a big iron donk up front with little else, so it’s of no surprise that the car was very frugal with diesel. I managed over sixty to the gallon on several occasions. “Normal” driving yielded economy figures in the mid fifties, but you could easily top 60 mpg without trying too hard (the maximum I recorded was over sixty five miles per gallon), and when I was hard on the car, in the winter, economy only once dropped below fifty to the gallon.

Make no bones about it: the early 1990s Fiesta diesels were very economical.

For what it was, the Fiesta had strong performance: little weight (beyond that hefty engine), lots of torque, and sensible gearing. Top gear was good from forty upwards. The Fiesta diesel’s linear performance felt significantly better than the earlier generation 1·1 Ghia he replaced. On a long motorway drive, the ride was smoother than the previous Fiesta and he had what I now call “the diesel lope” - the ability to cruise without effort or fuss, up or down gradients, in top gear.

The Endura-E (and 1∙3 HCS for that matter) has a similar output to Geoffrey’s and with slightly shorter gearing, these Ford petrol engines are almost as flexible.

Sadly, the Mk. 3 Fiesta’s weakness was in the handling department, and the basic models only came with 13” wheels wearing skinny 145-width tyres. Even my Cinquecento had 155-width tyres! The steering wheel was large and the car had over four turns lock-to-lock, but despite this, it was very heavy when parking. My regular commute was on a main road, most of it at the national speed limit with the odd village. The diesel’s acceleration from thirty in fourth gear would have left the Ghia behind, but one needed to slow down over any bumpy, twisty section of road.

Worse, still, was the car’s tendency to oversteer when pressing on: drive the car too quickly around a corner and the steering weighed up, try even harder and the steering went light, the back end started to let go then very quickly swing round. Not the ideal car for a gung-ho seventeen year old, or indeed, the rather-more-cautious-but-still-foolish-on-occasion young DervMan.

This untoward behaviour is also the norm for the Peugeot 205, but at much higher speeds and without the surefooted grip of the 106 and 205 anyway!

The Accident

It was also all too easy to lock up the wheels under even moderate braking in the wet, something that I only properly respected after one wet August night in 1996. I was dazzled by an oncoming front-fog-lamp abuser, overtaking somebody else. Regrettably, a brake-and-swerve reaction saw the back end skid, and lacking the experience, I over-corrected. This punted me into the verge. When the car struck the kerb, it flung it over, which ultimately neatly parked it on the roof, in a ditch. I recall /all too clearly/ putting the hazard warning lights on before I realised I was upside down and the car was slowly filling with water.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. I learnt a lot from this accident. Perhaps ABS would have prevented the skid, or perhaps I would have corrected it sooner, but I’ve not wasted too much time on “what if?” thoughts.

My principal likes were the fuel economy, linear performance, comfortable seat and good driving position. Geoffrey was a decent motorway cruiser.

I disliked the grumpy mid-winter starting, expensive insurance premiums, heavy steering when parking but most of all, the handling and braking of the car.

In terms of fuel economy, Geoffrey averaged 55·8 mpg over 15,500 miles (see chart).

In my ownership, I suffered from just the one problems - the silencer box went. I didn’t actually hear that it had gone, too!