The Guy Who Designed The DeTomaso Pantera Also Designed The Best Ford You Could Buy In 1978

Ford’s run of super-small cars in the United States over the past few decades has been admittedly less than stellar. Actually, let’s not be polite: it’s been pretty bad. But that hasn’t always been the case; when Ford got the tiny-car concept right, it really got it right. I’m talking about the first Ford Fiesta, and it deserves your respect.

I get your skepticism. A little while back, our Mercedes Streeter did a takedown of the EcoSport, Ford of America’s Indian import that was noticeably smaller and less refined than the competition. The EcoSport probably wasn’t much worse in period than the Korean-built Ford Aspire doorstop that preceded it in the late nineties, or even the Festiva that came before that, but none of these was even close to sniffing the exhaust of the class leaders.

What’s sad is that we all know Ford’s Europe-only offerings in the sub-compact range have been anything but poor. Naturally, we haven’t been able to get many of them, but almost fifty years ago, American Ford stores did receive a German-built front-drive hatchback with styling by the same person who created the DeTomaso Pantera and a motor almost twice the size of the standard engine overseas. Did you know that it was also Ford’s only truly successful “world car?” No, you wouldn’t, since you probably forgot about the first Ford Fiesta. That changes now.

A Diamond Among Turds

If you wanted to gift one of your Ford-crazy enemies in the best possible way, here’s what you could do: Offer them a like-new example of any Blue Oval product they want, but they don’t get to pick which year. No, that’s your job. Heh, heh. Personally, anything from Ford’s full-line catalog in the era between 1974 and 1978 would be perfect to really demoralize this person that you despise.

Let’s take a look at the highly underwhelming 1978 general cornucopia of crap:

You’ve got:
Pinto: By then, a nearly-decade-old car that wasn’t cutting edge when new in 1971
Granada: A Maverick rebodied to look like a Temu Mercedes
LTD II: “Mid-sized” warmed-over old Torino that was bigger than the far-better 1978 full-sized Caprice
LTD: The size of a freaking house with a gutless monster V8
Mustang II: Don’t get me started
Thunderbird: A tarted-up old Torino coupe with more overhang

To be fair, that first Fox body Fairmont wasn’t horrible, but the engine and chassis options were still pretty damn weak. No, the only decent car here is the yellow one that looks about ten years newer than most of the others. Oddly enough, it was a car that Ford was essentially forced to bring here.

You see, Ford Motor Company was under the gun of the U.S. Government to meet all-new fuel economy restrictions that required them to produce a fleet with an average of around 18MPG. What could the offer be to counteract the immense thirst of that gargantuan LTD? Thankfully, this is one time that the overseas counterpart of an American company had a great car, and the U.S. branch brought it over without screwing it up. If anything, they made it better.

Bobcats And Wolves, Oh My

Maybe it was the fact that their parent companies were based in the land of six lanes and thirty-cents-a-gallon gas, but both GM and Ford in Europe were late to the front-drive little car game. By the early seventies, the British Mini’s formula was being copied by the likes of Simca, Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, and Fiat. Starting in 1969, Ford of Europe began developing their own competitor for these sub-compacts with what they dubbed “Project Bobcat”, a name that might make you think of the Mercury version of the Pinto with a silly Lincolnesque grille, but in fact it bears no relation to that car.

Ford took a Fiat 127 as a benchmark (in fact, using such a car as a test “mule” for Project Bobcat components), yet what is not commonly known is that there were actually two Bobcat concept directions being worked on at once. According to author Roberto Parazitas, Ford of Europe was developing its own car, styled primarily in-house in Germany.

At the same time, Ford’s President Lee Iacocca and product planner Hal Sperlich initiated a somewhat larger “Bobcat” they dubbed the “Wolf,” which would have been launched and built in the United States. Ford had already purchased the automotive design house of Ghia; famed designer of the DeTomaso Pantera and Fiat 124 Spyder named Tom Tjaarda was employed there at the time and penned the “Wolf” concepts in both fastback and “shooting break” form.

Now, Henry Ford II famously hated little automobiles, thinking that small cars meant small profits, and he agreed to Project Bobcat only because Europe needed it. “Hank The Deuce” did not know about Lido and Hal’s side project, but according to Iacocca, “Sperlich and I were too hot on this project to give it up. There just had to be some way to build the Wolf and make a profit”. As with Lido and Sperlich’s failed minivan and small front-drive primary cars projects at Ford, you already kind of know where this was going, right?

A big issue turned out to be producing an engine and transaxle in America, and the immense tooling cost. Sperlich and Iacocca’s idea was to go to Honda to purchase drivetrains, an idea that Honda was surprisingly happy to accept (remember that Volkswagen provided powertrains for the first Dodge Omnis). Pleased with the news, Lee and Hal presented their work to Henry II and immediately had their behinds handed to them. Ford vehemently refused to build this American small car, further adding that “No car with my name on the hood will ever have a (racial slur) engine.” The name on the outside of the building they were in also did not say “Iacocca”, so that was the end of it—or was it?

No, it was just the beginning. The lovely styling of the “Wolf” ended up on the production Fiesta that was launched in 1976. Extremely well received by the press and buyers alike, the Fiesta went on to become one of Europe’s best-selling cars.

Sadly, Ford of Europe did not offer that cool “shooting brake” version that was shown as the Wolf, though they did tease the public with a one-off wagon-backed version called the Tuareg many years before Volkswagen used the name. This could possibly be the silliest/coolest thing you see all week here:

How about the good old nation that’s Home of the Whopper? Well, the 1975 announcement of the CAFÉ average fuel economy regulations meant that, like it or not, Henry II would need a small car in his fleet to bring those numbers down. Enter the car he begrudgingly accepted and picked the name “Fiesta” over marketing’s choice of “Bravo.” You just knew he’d still disagree with something, right?

It Could Skin A Rabbit

Here’s one of those times where running out of time and money was a blessing. Ford had no choice but to quickly federalize the great-looking European Fiesta . Unlike later failed “world cars,” where the chrome-laded whitewalled squishy-suspensioned American version doesn’t share any body panels with the German car, the only changes the U.S. specification Fiesta received were not-too-park-bench-like 5 MPH bumpers, door protection beams, round sealed beam and side marker lights (in a trick move, those bumpers appear to be identical front and back with the turn signals replaced by backup lights in the rear).

In America, the Fiesta came in four trim levels. The base model was naturally very stripped down and built to a price; next was a “decor” group edition that could add some minor equipment to make it more tolerable, but rest assured that that probably wasn’t any less expensive German-built import you could buy in the U.S. at the time.

The enthusiast’s choice was a sporting “S” model with thicker anti-roll bars, a tach, and ultra-cool super-seventies striped seat upholstery. By the way, I’ve been to Germany and nowhere did I see lederhosen-clad bellhops at hotels putting luggage into cars.

The absolute top-of-the-line model was the “Ghia” with a relatively fancy interior (back in the time when Ford put the badge of the famed styling house on every upper-end model they had, but at least the Fiesta really was a Ghia creation).

Feast your eyes below at the Ghia’s decedent cabin, with all the body-colored sheet metal parts covered in black vinyl. There was also upgraded upholstery, a fake woodgrain finish dash, and even an electric clock on the console below a whole bunch of rocker switches for various accessories. What kind of Mr. Moneybags bought this thing?

Now, under the hood, Ford saw some major problems with the standard Fiesta engines. In Europe, the standard motor was a 957 cc “Valencia” four with a measly 44 hp or a bored-out 1,117 cc version with a whopping 52 hp. (They received a 1300 cc version as the “performance” model a few years later.) With the prospect of the required US emission controls and extra weight from the additional safety equipment, the car wouldn’t have been able to move out of its own way in America. Ford fixed the problem by going a bit overboard, installing a 1597 cc version of that same engine boasting 67 horsepower in smogged-out form.

Looking at the specs below, you can see that the Fiesta has a two-barrel Weber carb, which is “the brand used in Ferrari.”

Those 67 horses don’t sound like much, but remember that this was a car that, by today’s standards, weighed next to nothing. Contemporary road tests typically pulled zero to sixty times of around 11.5 seconds or less; that’s about a second or two faster than the vaunted VW Rabbit. What’s really funny, though, is that figure is really only about a second or two slower than Ford’s sportiest car of the time- the 302 V8-powered Mustang II King Cobra! Also, I can guarantee that in terms of handling, a Fiesta could run rings around that Pinto-chassis piece of crap.

Most period reviews found the Fiesta to be an absolute blast to drive. It should come as no surprise that when you look at pictures of old SCCA Showroom Stock races from the era that there’s usually more than one Fiesta on the track. Remember, this was an actual German-built car at a relatively bargain-basement price at a time when dealers were gauging the crap out of the likes of Volkswagens.

Oddly enough, for a mainstream Big Three car sold in the late seventies, there was no automatic transmission option. According to a Road & Track review, Ford used the excuse of a slushbox being too much of a drag on such a small car and engine, though considering the wheel-chirping power, that sounds a bit hollow. At least that power helped with the optional air conditioning that was not available in Europe (the knobs and vents on the dash edge in the image below).

Negatives? Interior plastics were considered a bit cheap-feeling by some, but that’s really nitpicking on this affordable import. Honestly, most contemporary reviews struggled to find a bad word to say about the American Fiesta. As with so many things in life, we have no idea how good something is until it’s gone.

The Fiesta Takes A Siesta

This Fiesta continued to be sold in Europe until 1983 when the madly facelifted second-generation model was introduced (though the basic platform was still made up until early 1989). Unfortunately, after three brief model years in America, the little Ford’s run was done at the end of 1980. Ironically, the 1.6-liter engine standard for the United States wasn’t available in Europe until 1981, when it appeared in the XR2 version from the glorious era of competing lightweight and nimble “hot hatches” to combat the VW GTI (free of smog equipment, it offered 82 horsepower of oomph).

What killed it? Well, in 1981, both the clunky old Pinto (yes, they were still making a Pinto in 1980) and the Fiesta were replaced by the “world car” Ford Escort, which shared not nearly enough with the overseas model and wasn’t a “world car” at all. Humorous note: Ford’s reported claim that an automatic might weigh down the Fiesta too much was called out as bull when the 1.6-liter-engined, 69-horsepower Escort was offered with a slushbox even in its heaviest A/C equipped station wagon form. Only in the malaise era would a car with an 11-second zero-to-sixty time be essentially replaced by an all-new one that was five or six seconds slower. The “SS” on the cars below stands for “Super Slow”.

The Fiesta indeed brought the corporate average fuel economy numbers down, but with the German exchange rates, the Fiesta supposedly was exactly the profit sink which Henry II had feared. Still, as usual, when corporations lose money on a car, enthusiasts win.

Don’t let Ford’s recent track record skew your opinion on Ford’s ability to make desirable super-mini cars. We all seem to have forgotten a time in the distant past where Dearborn’s smallest product might have easily been its best.

topshot credit: Ford