Ford Fiesta 1.4 Ghia

I have owned this car for 3 years and driven nearly 60,000 miles and am still very pleased with my purchase. It is an excellent drivers car and the handling is brilliant and inspires confidence, it feels rock-solid even when pushed. The ride quality is excellent - very smooth.

It's very comfortable (in the front anyway) for a small car and well equipped. The CD player sounds great - better quality than my home stereo!!

The only gripe is that the brakes have needed some work (new rear master cylinder and soon new discs) but in 60,000 miles not too much of a problem.

The brakes work fine and the ABS has helped a few times on ice but they aren't as sharpfeeling as on more modern cars.

Faced with the option of a Mondeo, Focus, or Fiesta as a new company car, I took the opposite option to everyone else and chose the Ford Fiesta 1.4 Ghia 5dr. As a small city car, it's light on the tax, and with the 1.4 TDCi engine it pretty much runs on fresh air!

Having taken delivery of the car on Friday, I was pleased with the initial appearance. The 16" alloys (optional extra) looked superb, and added a meaningful stance to the car. Sadly, the alloys showed the cut down spec of the car with disc brakes not being an option. However, as the car is so light weight, this doesn't impede the braking ability, and is merely a question of looks.

The car is easy to drive, coming on boost quickly provided revs are over 1500rpm. Round town, the car is effortless, and provides enough power to keep up with the traffic. The car is underpowered. Don't expect to overtake on single-lane roads. If you want more power, there's a range of tuning boxes available for under £300 that will give you 95bhp. That should be pretty fun in such a small car. Finding your way from A to B without getting flustered is helped by the satellite navigation (£1000 optional extra), and the standard air conditioning.

The satellite navigation is able to direct you with confidence 90 percent of the time. You do have to learn what it means when it tells you to turn, but is accurate once you understand it. There are times it gets confused about whether it's on a road or not, but these are generally when emerging from a car park. It gives you a warning you need to turn, a graphical countdown, and then a turn now command. Utterly unmistakable.

If you do happen to be on the phone, or generally female unaware, then it's supremely quick to calculate another route, even telling you where the nearest U-turn point is, if required. A final feature of the GPS is TIM. TIM records the traffic broadcasts whilst the car is parked for up to 16 hours. This means that when you get into the car, you can listen to the last 16 hours of traffic reports to help you avoid those blackspots.

There is another data-driven traffic system that recalculates routes based on info from the radio station, but I've yet to experience this. The main down side of the GPS is that it requires a data CD to be inserted. An aftermarket CD/MiniDisc/MP3 changer is well advised.

The comfort of the car is pretty poor, with the seats akin to a velour-covered park bench (without arm rests). The seat is adjustable through a wide range, easily accomodating my 6'3" frame. The steering wheel is adjustable for rake, but sadly not for reach, which limits the ability to get a good seating position.

Having driven the car for 300 miles, I can honestly say it's the best handling car I've owned. OK, so Ford are usually pretty good, but it handles better than the Focus it replaced, and is another world apart from the Megane the Focus replaced. If you enjoy driving, and want an economical small car, the Fiesta is going to be hard to beat.