“It leaked oil. I got down on my hands and knees to smell it. It was like perfume.”      – Soichiro Honda

“Meanwhile, startling as it is that all visible evidence of invention should have been refined out of this instrument and that there should be delivered to us an object as natural as a pebble polished by the waves, it is equally wonderful that he who uses this instrument should be able to forget that it is a machine.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

In his recent post about the Detroit auto show, Editor Sawyer did not mention the 2012 Honda Civic show properties. When asked why, he said that the Civics were not worthy of coverage. After considerable thought, I decided to sift the Honda site for photos and probe a bit. I’m forced to disagree with his conclusion. I am amused by Honda’s choice of venue to unveil this popular car, as the Civic is almost always among the nation’s top ten sellers and the denizens of Detroit are certainly no friends. Civic is the foundation of the Honda brand, no matter that Accord outsells it. Civic and its relatives, like the excellent CR-V, the Element, and the Fit, are the core of Honda, no matter the success of the Odyssey.

Though a chunky evolution of the well-pressed lines of the current Civic, the 2012 Civic is also smaller on the outside and bigger on the inside. As for appearance, Honda is not known for producing the most attractive cars. Remember the first generations of the Prelude? Woof. But loyal Honda customers don’t turn to the company for flashy design. They want quality, and that characteristic Seiko-like performance. No matter what GM/Opel or Fiat or even Ford of Europe produce, it’s going to be a long time before their small-displacement four-cylinders are anything like a Honda four. If Honda carries over the current powertrains—base, high-performance Si and the “green” CNG and Hybrid—and evolves those engines and transmissions mid-cycle (2014 model year), the Civic will remain among the top ten sellers, just like Toyota’s carefully evolved Corolla.

Honda has enough equity in the bank to offer a flub now and then, but from the looks of it, this Civic is not going to be one of them. Watch the videos posted below to comprehend the depth of this company’s past achievement, and promise for the future.

Sure, the Honda Crosstour looks like a pregnant Narwhal about to give birth, its tail whipping frantically to usher out the progeny. Crosstour is unattractive, and the interior is claustrophobic, that Narwhal shape greatly limiting rearward visibility and creating a cramped rear seat. Our own tech guru owns an Accord V6 and loves it, every bit as much as he loves his old BMWs and his Suzuki GSX-R. But he also laughs when I call the Crosstour the Narwhal.

Honda Ridgeline? Detroiters love to dump on this vehicle, but they can only see it through their own lens. It’s not meant to compete with Silverado and F-150, or Tundra. It’s a quirky pickup for Honda people. Yes, it has seriously stupid design mistakes, like a spare tire that would be trapped under your payload—if you got a flat while hauling dirt, you’d have to shovel plenty before changing the tire. Stupid. Ridgeline is designed for Honda people who want to pull a couple of watercraft to Lake Isabella for the weekend. Yes, it’s ugly. But it’s a play truck, not a work truck, a concept Detroiters cannot grasp.

And the biggest of Honda’s current flubs? The CR-Z, though Honda claims sales are doing OK. It’s uglier than a dung beetle, it’s nothing more than an Insight two-door, and the interior is so incredibly cheap I wonder what on earth Honda’s product planners were thinking. Look at the plastics inside. The backside of a cheap Chinese-made clock radio has more sex appeal and style than the inside of a Honda CR-Z, not to mention a Kia Forte Koup or Scion tC. This is not the insightful engineering and innovation one expects from the corporate descendent of Soichiro Honda. I’d still take it over a Chevy Volt because I know the fundamentals will have that Seiko feel and reliability, but it’s not terribly impressive. The CR-Z is a reminder that even Honda turns out an ugly baby now and then. Oooof.

The current Civic is quintessential Honda: crisp, clean, light, efficient, and looking both a bit conservative yet fresh at the same time. A freshly pressed suit from a conservative maker like Hart, Schaffner & Marx. Just like the good old days when Pininfarina sketched the Honda bodies. The current Civic Si, though hampered by signature peaky VTEC power, is an interesting car to drive quickly, though paying nearly $30,000 for the Mugen version is downright stupid and Honda should think carefully about how to evolve a performance sub-brand. Honda’s big-displacement engines lack for refinement, but the small-bore engine of the Civic is silky smooth. Man, they’re nice little motors. Transmission action is silky, too. Very nice.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the current Civic. Super-tight body structure. Clanky rear suspension—amazingly so, due to poorly thought-out damping and bushings. Brakes are OK, but pedal feel is calibrated for grandma, or really wimpy fellas. Steering has little to no feel. Put a Civic EX on an autocross course and you’ll enjoy plowing understeer at every turn, even when you work hard NOT to push the car and you steer with a very, very light hand, with delicate inputs.

When the 2012 Civic unveiled at the 2011 Detroit auto show is finally replaced, assuming a five-year product cadence that carries us into 2017, and assuming it’s an evolution of the current body shell, the basics of the Civic will be more than a decade old.

Civic’s extra-long product life tells you a few things: a decade-old Honda body structure will still be better than anything Opel’s cooking up for GM and most likely as good or better than anything Ford of Europe will create in the coming few years as Fiesta and Focus evolutions. It will certainly whip the beejesus out of any of Fiat’s small vehicles. Among volume producers, Honda and Toyota make the strongest, tightest body structures, and don’t let any Detroit or Korean blowhards tell you otherwise. BMW makes tight structures, too, like the MINI, and damn they’re starting to look like a “volume” manufacturer, but MINIs tend to be a bit heavy, and cost a whole lot. The same applies to BMWs, only more so. But luxury is another story.

Unlike Editor Sawyer, I’m not disappointed with the Civic Concept. My first real car after college was a 1984 Civic hatchback. Not a pretty car, but much beloved in Ewing Lore, nicknamed The Super Coop, my hommage to Super Chicken. The next? A Civic EX coupe purchased in 1996 while living in Michigan and working at Ford SVT, purchased as a form of protest against the crap Ford dealer that destroyed the engine of the Escort GT I had circa 1994-95. That 1996 Civic was shockingly quiet and refined compared to the rasty, loud, and rough Escort GT I bought as a sign of loyalty when first moving to Michigan. I have not forgotten the sense of exhilaration driving it home that first night, from Plymouth, Michigan, to Ann Arbor, taking great delight in the smooth shifter and engine, and an interior that was spooky quiet compared to the nasty Mazda-based Escort hatchback I had turned in. Hell, I could hear myself thinking. My girlfriend has the same 2001 Accord Coupe she bought after graduation from college, and it is beautifully made. Frankly, it’s better than the Hondas being sold now, with an interior every bit equal to the Mercedes of the time, and in some ways superior.

Like everyone else, Honda is stalling on introduction of a new Civic because the market has been so bad. Everyone in the car business is waiting and hoping for the economy to turn around before introducing cool new products. That’s most likely why they’re taking time to replace the current Civic.

The concluding verse in my Honda Civic love letter? Hell, I’m not even writing it. Randy Riggs, who once edited the sports car magazine I worked on for many years and who now ably edits Vintage Motorsport (a true work of art and certainly worth the price of admission), had a chance meeting with Soichiro Honda some years ago. Like me, Randy declares Soichiro a personal hero. Soichiro was the Japanese equivalent of Enzo Ferrari or Ettore Bugatti in many respects—he made gorgeous Grand Prix bikes and cars that whipped the Europeans on their home turf—yet also comparable in many regards to Henry Ford, a great industrialist. Imagine starting a company making little engines to clip onto bicycles, and about a decade later dominating the Europeans at the Isle of Man TT, and then entering Formula Grand Prix racing with a car of your own design and actually winning a race. The key? Honda is an engineering company specializing in transportation. Here is Randy’s description of that moment in time:

“I can’t remember the year (1973 or ‘74) and place where I met Mr. Honda, but it was at a motorcycle show or intro. Back then Honda encouraged idea projects from employees—I hope they still do. I was offered the chance to drive an employee’s conception of a personal people mover (think very early Segway), electric as I recall. Soichiro Honda was my passenger. It was an honor because he was one of my big heroes and through an interpreter Mr. Honda said, ‘Thank you very much. You are a very good pilot. I enjoyed very much the ride.’”

“I wish someone nearby had a camera. It was one of those moments in your life that happen out of the blue and for no particular reason other than being in the right place at the right time.”

(And no, there is not the least implication that Randy shares my opinions of the Narwhal or anything else posted here, guys.)

Though Honda’s car division is currently playing safe and thus not entirely fulfilling the innovative spirit of Soichiro—Honda needs to step up—I don’t agree with Editor Sawyer’s assessment of the upcoming Civic, and I’m not looking to see Honda fall from grace, supplanted by a revived Detroit. Not at all. I suspect next year you will still find the best-selling cars in America to be Toyota’s Camry and Corolla and Honda’s Accord and Civic, with a Nissan Altima and perhaps a Ford rental-fleet special tossed in.

Honda is an advanced engineering company that happens to specialize in transportation. Watch the videos below. I trust such a company to come up with a pretty good car, one I can depend on. If the next Civic is a careful evolution rather than a bold stroke, perhaps that’s because Honda is not digging itself out of a ditch.

And the U3-X personal mobility prototype.

Oh, and the Honda jet. I will fly nothing but Boeing unless I have absolutely no choice–I drive to Vegas to avoid Airbus planes–but I would feel pretty safe on a Honda jet. The American private jets are excellent and remain the first choice, but I have no doubt a Honda would get me where I want to go in style and comfort.

And just so you get my joke, meet the Narwhal, inspiration for the Honda Crosstour.

True to its Tokyo breeding, Nissan cube is ideally sized and packaged for congested streets in urban America. Mechanical details and even the styling of “box cars” like the cube, Kia Soul, and Scion xB are secondary to how well they fit into crowded urban and beachside neighborhoods, and how simple they are, how minimalist they are. Box cars are the automobile stripped to 21st century essentials, with a bit of anime character folded in. By these measures, cube is a fantastic urban scooter.

Prime Numbers

• Price: $13,990. As tested: $20,120.
• Engine: 1.8-liter DOHC transversely mounted inline four
• Horsepower: 122 hp @ 5,200
• Torque: 127 lb ft @ 4,800
• Drivetrain: Front-wheel-drive with six-speed CVT
• Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/Torsion beam with built-in stabilizer bar
• Length: 157.5-in.
• Width: 66.7-in.
• Height: 65.0-in.
• Wheelbase: 104.7-in.
• Weight: 2,904 lbs

Who’s The Buyer

This car is for you if:

• You loved the original Scion xB and want a similarly boxy car with a small, thrifty engine.
• You want to carry four friends to dinner or the movies in your over-populated urban neighborhood: maximum space in a minimalist package, and it’s easy to park.
• You’ve got funk, and can laugh at yourself and the world.

This car is not for you if:

• You want strong acceleration and excellent handling dynamics.
• You prefer a strongly male and reserved public image.
• You want the boxy cargo space to carry your pack of hounds to the “dog beach” in your area, in which case you might be better off with the aged Honda Element because of its urethane floors and water-repellent seat fabric.

Alternatives To Consider

• Honda Element. Originally designed to attract Gen X and Gen Y surfers, Element instead sold well to typical Honda Baby Boomer customers. Honda missed the target, but Element developed a cult Boomer following. To attract younger buyers, Honda launched the Element SC, which still misses the point due to its price. Element is an excellent vehicle, but is also more expensive, larger, thirstier, more powerful, and more sophisticated than cube.
• Honda Fit. Not quite a “box car.” Fit’s small 1.5-liter engine was recalibrated to deliver a peaky 117 hp, putting the Fit within spitting distance of the cube’s power ratings. Fit has the Magic Seat, an amazingly versatile rear seat that flips and folds into a wide range of positions to enhance cargo space. Fit Sport is the one to buy, out the door for about $17,000. Fit possesses Honda levels of refinement in most respects, though Honda is guilty of thrifting its cars in recent years, with more suspension noise and cheaper materials than you would have expected in the past.
• Kia Soul. A breakthrough vehicle for Kia, the first Kia I’d recommend without caveat. Women seem to find the hamster ads appealing, but I’m not sure a male child would want to drive around in a Soul after seeing those ads. Soul captures the essence of the original, smaller Scion xB, but with a fresh and distinctly Kia style—and whoever thought we’d use the term “Kia style”? Soul’s bottom trim level is stripped-down with an old engine and manual transmission, meant only to provide a very low MSRP for dealer ads. Better to look at the three higher trim levels, which offer considerable value. The top-spec Soul Sport is comparable to the Nissan cube krom tested here, and is about $1,000 less in price. Like Scion xB and cube, Kia Soul is an IIHS Top Safety Pick. Who knew? The Koreans have learned to build a proper body structure. That’s a long haul from the Hyundai Excel trash bins of the Eighties and the Kia-built Ford Festivas of the early Nineties, which were rolling heaps.
• Scion xB. Second-generation grew bigger and heavier, and it’s designed for the US market, so the current xB does not stand out the same way the first-gen “narrow-gauge” Japan Domestic Market xB did. But the current xB meets the desires of many first-gen xB owners and delivers a very high level of features for the money, plus an excellent selection of accessories and audio systems which, by the way, Nissan, Kia and others have copied. The rear seat offers ample legroom. Cargo and seating versatility is high, build quality is excellent, xB is an IIHS Top Safety Pick, and the Scion brand ranks at the top of most measures of customer satisfaction. Soul, cube, and xB cover the spectrum in size.

WHILE LIVING IN HIROSHIMA, JAPAN, IN 1999, working on a product development and marketing study, I experienced first-hand the Kei-jidosha Suzuki-built “box cars” that young Japanese males were turning into their own version of 1970s American disco vans. During my stint in Japan, I saw these boxes running around every night. The kids were typical Japanese tuners, with a few “coconut head” surfers also driving them, no doubt because surf boards fit so perfectly in back. If you’ve never spent time threading the narrow back streets and alleys of urban Japan, or parts of Europe, you won’t understand how useful a tiny van can be.

When the original Scion xB turned up in the US, I understood, and knew it would be popular in my over-populated beach neighborhood. The stumpy MINI Cooper S I had at the time was also popular in my neighborhood– MINIs are easy to park in crowded neighborhoods, though their low ride height doesn’t mesh well with tall city curbing. The Scion xB went much farther than the MINI, with four doors, ample room for four or even five people, a tall seating position that made it easy to get in and out of the car, plus huge cargo space and a lower price– small on the outside and big on the inside.

Though more radically styled than the original xB, which was an anime version of the Chevy Astro van, Nissan cube is close to the 2003 xB concept, with slightly more power, making freeway entry ramps less intimidating.

Engine, Transmission, Drivetrain

Based on the conservative Nissan Versa, cube is first cousin to the Renault Megane sold in Europe. Versa’s 1.8-liter four-cylinder is partnered with either a manual transmission or a continuously variable transmission, or CVT, which is an efficient form of automatic transmission. Our cube krom test car had the CVT, which best fits cube’s character. I wouldn’t bother with the manual transmission.

cube’s double overhead cam engine is sophisticated and smooth, delivering a nice balance between fuel mileage and power. It has about five horsepower more than the recently tweaked Honda Fit. More importantly, cube has much more torque than the Honda Fit, so it performs better in urban driving. Kia Soul’s 2.0-liter engine has 142 HP.

CVTs have unique characteristics making them an excellent choice for a small-engined city car. Nissan has spent enough man-years developing this transmission that powertrain sound is unobtrusive under a wide range of conditions, and the CVT makes the most of the torque and horsepower available. Unless you’re running up a steep hill, or full-throttle to enter a highway, engine sound is subdued in the cube.

There’s no real “kick-down” as with a conventional automatic. You press hard on the accelerator pedal and the transmission seamlessly raises revs to the engine’s most powerful point. If you stay on the throttle hard, the engine will smoothly and steadily climb in revs and stay there until you are up to highway speed: ease off the throttle and revs drop dramatically. Above 4500-5000 rpm at full throttle when you’re pushing the car up to highway speed, the engine is boomy, but I doubt most owners will encounter it often or care. cube is not, by any stretch, a performance car. Again, the CVT is the best transmission for cube as the involvement demanded by a manual transmission doesn’t fit the transportation module character of the car.

Suspension, Steering, Brakes

Short, with surprising outward visibility, an extremely tight turning radius, and very light electric steering, cube can thread nearly any parking lot situation imaginable, and parallel park into unbelievably tight spots. Bred in the crowded streets of Tokyo, cube can ably cope with US traffic conditions.

Steering is extremely light with little feel, thanks to electric power assist. cube is not a performance car, so light steering is acceptable. If this were an Infiniti G37S, MINI Cooper S or Mustang GT, I’d complain about the lack of steering feel. I complained about it in the Ford Fiesta review, but Fiesta has sporting pretensions (and latent capabilities) that seem to warrant more evolved steering. cube has rheostat steering, perfectly suited to an urban bumper car.

Braking is adequate for a car happiest at speeds below 50-60 mph. Honda Element, Scion xB and Kia Soul all have four-wheel discs, but cube’s rear drums are not a significant fault in context of its mission as urban scooter. cube also includes a full suite of braking technologies, from ABS and Brake Assist to traction and stability control. Nissan may eventually be forced to adopt four-wheel discs if only for marketing reasons and safety imagery.

cube’s ride is soft and comfortable enough without wallowing on patchy road surfaces. You won’t mistake cube for a Cooper S and I don’t recommend pushing it too hard through corners. A Cooper S drives like the front-drive BMW it is, but performance is NOT part of the cube equation. Relax, take your time, enjoy the drive, enjoy the view beyond the billboard-size windshield, and all’s well. cube will force you to set aside Type A driving and relax. If you can’t do that, don’t buy the car.

Body, Design, Quality

cube, Soul, and xB are the US-scaled versions of those kei-jidosha “box cars” I found so amusing on the narrow streets of Hiroshima, Japan. They’re also built to a far higher standard : kei cars are pretty cheap and not suited to life outside East Asia. cube has six airbags, a well-engineered body structure and standard stability control. Just like the Kia Soul and Scion xB, Cube was rated a Top Safety Pick by the IIHS.

cube has a tall, airy cabin. The windshield sits far ahead of the driver, conjuring images of an anime big rig. Though six three, I had about four inches of head room. True to the box car genre, cube is roomy and comfortable. Because of the distant placement of the windshield and the extreme headroom, plus its kitschy exterior design, cube reminded me a bit of the VW New Beetle which, thanks to its high roof and huge windshield, has a similar “glass bubble” ambiance. cube’s tall, upright windshield brings one problem: wind ruffle at highway speeds. By 60-65 mph, you get a noticeable amount of wind noise at the A pillars. Solution? Turn up the radio. This is an issue Nissan engineers might resolve when the cube is refreshed in a couple years.

As a genre, “box cars” are among the easiest to live with in urban neighborhoods. You either laugh and smile when you walk up to the cube, or you think, “What the heck am I doing in this thing?” There’s really no in-between. cube is even more polarizing than the original Scion xB. For me, it’s a Flintstones telephone booth, or an anime car. Like a childhood toy, it can spark your imagination. As with our comments on cube’s relative lack of performance, here too if you’re Type A aggressive and can’t laugh at yourself or drive at a moderate pace, don’t buy a cube.

cube’s asymmetrical design may be off-putting for some, but proves brilliant once you’re INSIDE the car, as you can see cars and motorcycles lurking in your blind spot, thanks to an ample glass area at the right rear corner of the car. No need for a blind spot camera and warning system as on out-sized SUVs and über-sedans.

The body engineering team delivered the typically good work one expects from the Japanese. Panel gaps are even and panels sharply aligned. Japanese build quality. The door openings are big, the lower door sill is limited, and the doors swing open wide. In short, it’s easy to get in and out.

That also applies to the rear hatch, which swings open like a refrigerator door to the left, putting the door between you and traffic when loading cargo curbside.

A slave to fashion? Perhaps, but from the inside-out the cube’s tall, glassy greenhouse is highly functional, a sign of intelligent industrial design.

Ergonomics, Interior

cube’s interior is a great place to spend time when shuttling around urban and suburban streets. cube’s primary gauge pack is excellent, rendered in cool blue electroluminescent light. All sightlines for gauges and controls are clear. Anyone can get in the cube and within a few minutes have most of the important gauges and controls figured out. cube is the exact opposite of more expensive, feature-laden cars that demand an investment of time and instruction before all controls and gauges are understood. cube is minimalist, like a scooter.

Heating and air-conditioning controls on the center stack are concentrated in a circular cluster. Buttons and knobs are large and easy to work, with a positive if delicate touch. The audio system has the only major set of controls. In the cube krom the audio system has a Rockford-Fosgate subwoofer and enhanced speaker system. From the cube S up, there is Bluetooth connectivity. Like the car, the dash and center stack are clean and minimalist, with a humorous style.

Certain shapes are repeated throughout the vehicle. The steering wheel-mounted toggles to operate cruise control and audio have a dog-bone shape, which is repeated in the layout of the speedo and tach, and shape of the dashboard. Another repeated shape is the water drop of concentric radiating circles of the roof liner, and the matte black exterior panel behind the left-rear passenger window.

Interior materials are oddly conventional, but well executed. The door panels and dash are made of hard plastics, typical of cars priced in the teens. Seats in the krom edition are faced in a silver and black checked pattern with dark cloth for the seat base and sides. The fabric has a soft hand. cube krom offers a rearview monitor and intelligent key.

Because cube is, well, a cube, interior space and particularly cargo space are good. The rear seat reclines, and slides forward and back to maximize cargo or rear legroom, depending on your needs. The front seats can recline very nearly flat, so when you’re parked at the beach or you’re tailgating with your parentals at a college football game, you can recline the front seats, then push back and recline the rear seat to set up a space to lounge and relax. cube could use a few more inches of rear-seat leg room.

Oddly enough, compare cube’s wheelbase with Versa’s and you see exactly where that legroom went: Versa’s wheelbase is about 3 inches longer with commensurate increase in rear legroom. Hmmmm. A product planning compromise in favor of abbreviated overall dimensions of the car.

As with the Ford Fiesta we drove a few months ago, there’s a deep cargo well, then a large step up to the folded rear seatbacks. As in the Fiesta, this is to maximize cargo volume. I have a personal preference for raised flat cargo floors that provide a wide, flat surface when the rear seats are folded. That said, cube can haul plenty of cargo. The base cube is available with a rear-seat delete option, clearly aimed at local shopkeepers who want a cool delivery van, competing with the boxier and more utilitarian if flawed Ford Transit Connect.

Conclusion

Some time ago, an English friend who manufactures race vehicles asked me about the original Scion xB. Being a member of the English gentry, raised on an estate, he couldn’t understand why a young man would want a refrigerator box with a puny engine. Why not a used Lotus Elise or used BMW? Why not a restored vintage sports car that would attract all the coeds? Well, cost. Cost of maintenance and insurance, plus initial purchase price. If dad’s paying for the car, does he really want to turn his kid loose in a car that might kill him, or at the least end up wadded into a very expensive ball? Probably not. And Junior has the advantage of a car that can haul his belongings home for summer, or from dorm room to cool senior-year apartment.

Which leads to another question: cube marketing painfully copies the marketing of the original Scion xB, with accessories, ties to art schools, and the like. But who is buying the car? In my neighborhood, I see them driven by very much the same folks who bought the VW New Beetle: baby boomers who want to remember the Summer of Love. Under current economic conditions, any sale is a good sale. But is the cube an alternative for the older folks who favor Nissan Versa (average age in the fifties), or enticement for younger buyers heading off to Blue Mountain State or photography school in Santa Barbara?

cube was the natural competitor in Japan for the Toyota bB that became the original 2003 Scion xB. cube has finally arrived in the US. If you’re a Type A, aggressive male, you want to move on. This car is not for you, just as the other “box cars” are not. If you need a well-built, inexpensive car with excellent safety engineering, a high level of features and plenty of cargo space for shuttling around a crowded neighborhood, cube is an excellent choice.

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.