Straightline

After the Mazda press conference, we went next door to the Ford booth at the Geneva auto show, where we saw three- and five-door hatchback versions of the 2010 Ford Fiesta (a 2009 model for Europe). It was kind of like watching the Mazda press conference again, because the Fiesta looks so similar to the Mazda 2. They are, of course, platform mates.



Ford of Europe didn't hire a band for its unveiling, so instead we saw a typical dance troupe, and the members whimsically tossed around the sheets on the cars.



Times are hardly whimsical at Ford, though, as the company attempts to carry out Alan Mullaly's plan for a return to global profitability by 2009. Ford of Europe isn't the roadblock, obviously, as the division is known for building quality cars that Europeans actually want to buy. So it's leading the way with the development of new cars.



"The Fiesta is most definitely a blueprint for how Ford will handle its business in the future," says John Fleming, CEO of Ford of Europe. "As we develop C cars [such as the Focus], they will go under the same blueprint." Question is, can Ford sell these cars profitably at lower U.S. prices, without removing all the good fat from the cars?

Not for us to decide, obviously, but we will weigh in on the paint choices for the showcars: They're pretty oppressive.

The top engine for the new Fiesta, and the one we'll most likely see in our Fiesta, is a 1.6-liter four-cylinder good for about 113 horsepower. Of course, Ford is also working on a very-small-displacement four-cylinder engine that would provide comparable performance, thanks to direct injection and two-stage turbocharging. This engineering effort is known within Ford as "Econetic" and to celebrate it, we were handed our press kit in this apparently environmentally sustainable bag.



 --Erin Riches, Senior Editor