Zetec S from £12,595 has subtle sports styling additions, including five-spoke, 16-inch alloy wheels, projector headlamps, front fog lamps, sports spoiler and bumper skirts. This theme is continued on the inside with a leather steering wheel, unique sports gear knob and sports seats creating a focused driving environment. Standard equipment adds a trip computer, side airbags and air conditioning.

The Zetec S has the all-new 1.6-litre, 120PS Duratec Ti-VCT petrol engine, but will also be available with the 1.6-litre 90PS TDCi turbodiesel engine.

Zetec from £10,995 and Titanium from £12,095 have a ‘premium’ look and feel, with chrome surround to the grille and side windows, front fog lamps, leather steering wheel and air conditioning. Zetec adds a traditional luxury feel with chrome, finished with 15-inch alloy wheels and projector headlamps, while Titanium brings a contemporary look to this equipment level with higher contrast materials, such as dark gloss surfaces and bright metal accents.

Both models offer a broad spectrum of engines, with Duratec petrols available in 1.25, 1.4 and 1.6-litre and Duratorq TDCi diesels in either 1.4 or 1.6-litre, with a choice of power outputs.

ECOnetic versions are priced from £11,845 and use a 1.6-litre TDCi turbodiesel unit tuned for economy, lowered suspension and low rolling resistance tyres to achieve low emissions of 98g/km making it exempt from the UK road fund duty.

Lighter in weight but stronger and with a stiffer body, the new Fiesta feels and looks a much improved car and you can bet it will be near – or at – the top of all the Car of the Year awards and competitions.

The overall styling whether it is three or five-door with its rising waistline giving it an aerodynamic wedge shape with a mixture of Kinetic muscular and angular styling lines makes the new Fiesta look larger than the outgoing version even though the overall length is more or less the same at 3,958mm.

It really is a very pleasing modern car to look at and quite distinctive. Better still it looks expensive and upmarket. The three-door models look sportier but the five-door models are in real life more practical.

Inside it looks and feels the same. A nice combination of textures and materials and the upper centre console Ford is very proud off. It takes on the design of a mobile phone and all the functions are quite logical once you have taken a few minutes to find your way around the system.

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