Well, I thought highly of the Taurus. Fiesta? Not so much, though there’s nothing so horribly wrong that the car can’t be fixed before market launch next spring/summer. Thanks to an invitation from Ford PR, I had a chance to drive a Fiesta last week at the Orange County Auto Show. Ford hired an event marketing company to run consumer test drives across the country. During press days for the OC Auto Show, I had a row of Fiestas all to myself for about an hour. I only wish the drive route had been something more compelling than a half-dozen laps around the block, with Disneyland to my left. The car I drove was a European-market manual five-door hatchback in Amazon tree toad green metallic.

Ford of Europe developed the Fiesta from a Mazda2 that was lauded upon arrival for the fact it was lighter than its predecessor, a rare occurrence these days. Design is derivative, inspired by current Peugeots, which are fantastic looking. (Mazda also looked to Peugeot for the front end of the Mazda3.) Too bad Peugeot ruined its reputation here in decades past because their current models would sell very well on the West Coast and in other sunny regions.

You want the conclusion at the start? Well, if Ford can fix a few calibration problems prior to launch, they’ll have a home run. If they don’t, they might get a ground rule double and find themselves digging out of the hole.

Powered by a 1.6-liter naturally aspirated four, Fiesta has decent acceleration, in part due to its trim curb weight. Problem is, there’s a fair amount of drivetrain shunt, meaning the engine and transaxle can be felt bouncing around when you dip in and out of the throttle. This impacts shift quality, so the Fiesta does not have a sweet, smooth shift action. You can feel the linkage binding because the drivetrain is bouncing around.  Perhaps Ford of Europe wanted to isolate the engine because they considered it buzzy, though I found the engine to have a very nice upper intake sound (clearly part of the light curb weight is due to minimal use of sound deadening–you can’t make a car light and super quiet these days). This little car wants to have a manual transmission. But as is, I’d recommend an automatic to avoid issues of shift quality. Most Fiestas will be sold with automatics, though it’s sad to think the Fiesta as it now exists cannot develop a cult following among aggressive young males who would enjoy a properly sorted car.

Next, the pedals. The clutch and throttle pedals work OK. But the brakes? I am stunned to think that Ford of Europe performed the calibration on this pedal. The pedal is soft, mushy, and has a looooong travel. Barely touch the pedal and the brakes bite too hard, making the car difficult to drive smoothly. Once you get past that initial grab, which causes your body to lunge forward, you end up pushing the pedal harder and harder. Pretty soon you get that sinking feeling in your stomach as the pedal travels ever closer to the floor–it’s not progressive and predictable in its effect. Not good. If Ford has to pick one issue to fix before launch, it’s this. Revisit the brake pedal calibration, which should be relatively easy to fix in the coming six months. A little firmer, less grabby, more progressive, more linear in its effect.

Beyond drivetrain shunt and the mushy brake pedal, there is one other dynamic failing: rheostat steering. The Fiesta uses electric power steering, which means an electric motor reads your input at the wheel and moves the steering rack. It requires miles of software coding to replicate the great feel of a traditional hydraulic power assist system. BMW’s original Z4 had EPS, resulting in the worst steering I’ve experienced in a BMW, ever. It was total crap. Eventually, BMW accepted that more code was needed and put the computer nerds to work. With electric power steering, you’re in essence making a steering curve by stacking up blocks, so you need lots of little blocks of code to replicate a smooth curve. Right now? Fiesta steering has little more feel than the rheostat used to dim or raise the lights in your living room. Will most customers care? No. I hate it, but most mainstream customers won’t know the difference and will think it’s simply very light, and thus easy to drive. I view this as a matter of pride. Ford should sort it out.

In terms of packaging, the Fiesta is not bad. Big doors, easy to climb in and out, tilt-telescope wheel and a driver seat with height adjustment. It’s very easy to find a comfortable position behind the wheel. In fact, the driver’s seating position and relationship to the controls in the Fiesta is fantastic. You feel like you’re at the wheel of a go-kart. I love it. Ford (and Mazda) nailed this critical element of car design—making the minor calibration issues listed above all the more insufferable.

Fiesta will have a USB “jump drive” for your iPhone, plus an AUX port, and Sync™ will be available, which is currently the best wireless connectivity system in the business. Power windows with express-down on the driver’s window, plus power mirrors and door locks are standard. No conventional key, but instead a fob and a start button on the dash. A proximity sensor is built into the key fob: walk up to the car and you can press a small button on the door handle to unlock the doors. Nice touch. In essence, Ford product planners have accepted that MINI and Scion changed the small-car world, and even buyers of little cars expect all the amenities.

Materials and interior build quality were better than average, with no shortage of soft-touch material. However, I can see why Ford CEO Mullaly went to the Frankfurt Auto Show in September with a whole lot of executives, and left many of them behind. Mullaly put a gang of Six-Sigma blackbelts down the Ford of Europe rabbit hole. Those Cockneys are going to get their asses kicked by good old-fashioned American know-how. Considering the Fiestas will be built in American plants, and that Ford North America has a better grasp of quality than does Ford of Europe (there’s a change of pace), I hold out hope that Fiestas we’ll see here will be properly screwed together. If Ford can deliver both initial quality and long-term durability, Fiesta will succeed. There is no reason on earth why they cannot.

The rear hatch opens with an electric release: press your fingertips into the soft rubber release grip and the lid pops open. Very nice, and again something that MINI and Scion led with. Because my test car was a Euro-market version, it had a deep well for cargo. Fold the rear seats forward and they go mostly flat, but you’re left with a deep well then a seven or eight-inch jump up to the seatbacks. I’d prefer to see a raised flat cargo floor that meets squarely with fold-flat seatbacks. This being a European market car, I expect Ford of Europe went for maximum cargo space. Hey, Portuguese farmers need to haul their goats around and you need every cubic inch you can get. Guillermo the Goat would probably enjoy a ride behind the rear seatbacks on his way to market.

Another sign that my test drive was in a European-market car? You can adjust the pitch of the headlights. So, you load up your Fiesta with the bambinos and Abuelito plus Guillermo the Goat and a couple of chickens for a drive to Cadiz, and the Fiesta is riding on its bump stops. Then you adjust the headlights. This feature is not legal in the US.

Ford, here’s your crash course fix-it list: Rheostat steering, driveline shunt (stiffer bushings and mounts, guys), and that sloppy brake pedal. Come on, you can get this resolved before production begins. I know it. Buck up.

Now, on to a favorite topic of mine: performance derivatives. Ford murdered Special Vehicle Team about five years ago and only pretends such a group actually exists (you notice the Raptor has no special powertrain? It’s not a real SVT vehicle, and they’ll need to make significant changes to Raptor every year to meet their sales targets, another sign that it’s not a very special vehicle—special vehicles must be marathon runners in terms of sales, racking up 2,500-5,000 sales each year for at least 3-4 years). Ford should let someone like Andy Slankard at Ford Racing (father of the beautifully balanced SVT Focus, and a supporting engineer on the ’95 Cobra R and ’99 F-150 Lightning) build a proper performance version of the Fiesta. Slankard was once a race instructor while working in aerospace in California, and he wasn’t all bad in a go-kart. I’d wager his resulting Fiesta would be better than anything the Cockneys at Ford of Europe might cook up. The aftermarket may develop engine parts for the Fiesta, but it’s unlikely because the engine won’t be used in bigger US-market cars so the potential market is small unless Fiesta becomes a cult hit–which is why the issues above must be fixed. Besides, such aftermarket add-ons are often half-ass and more expensive than a factory-built performance motor. Ford needs to do the hard work of plumbing a turbo engine, and there appears to be maybe-just-barely-kinda-sorta enough room under the hood. (Rumors persist that the coming 1.6-liter EcoBoost four with 180 hp will be stuffed under the hood of a three-door performance version in 2012.) Such a Fiesta RS or SVT or ST will need careful work on damping, springing, and sway bars, plus bigger brakes, with discs at the rear (currently Fiesta has rear drums). Also, they’d need to fix the dead steering, the drivetrain shunt, and so forth, but I repeat myself ad nauseam. A Fiesta RS should be a laugh to drive. Fact is, a standard Fiesta should be a whole lot more fun to drive than it is.

Ford, make the fixes—they’re not insurmountable—and you’ll have a home run. Go as is and you’ll sell a lot of them with automatics to frugal pensioners in the heartland. This car is missing all the fine handling that made the Focus a hit when it first arrived about nine years ago. Buck up, guys.