All-new Ford Fiesta is launched at Beijing auto show

Shanghai, April 21 (Gasgoo.com) Ford revealed its all-new global small car, the Ford Fiesta, as a vibrant five-door hatch on April 20 at the Beijing auto show. The new Ford Fiesta has been remodeled for a new generation of customers as the first major product of Ford's new global product development process.

As part of its plan to roll out models globally to cut development costs, Ford will distribute and deliver its five-door hatchback in Europe, Asia, South Africa, and the Americas in the next three years, the company said in a press release at the event in Beijing. The all-new Ford Fiesta is expected to hold its global appeal because of its dynamic features created by the bold "kinetic design." It has accentuated the carmaker's great strides in craftsmanship and quality while continuing Ford Fiesta's traditional strengths of practicality, agility and safety.

The five-door Fiesta brings out the most appealing elements of Verve Concept. The exterior body structure of the new Fiesta makes extensive use of ultra high-strength steels including boron steel and dual-phase steel, which imparts greater strength to the vehicle while reducing its weight. These steels are used particularly in safety critical areas, such as the A-pillar and B-pillar, part of the ultra-rigid "door ring" structure of the Fiesta body side.

Ford's acclaimed dynamics engineers responsible for fine-tuning the Focus and Mondeo model's driving dynamics have worked extensively to enhance Fiesta's ride comfort and isolate road, wind and power-train noise from the cabin, and to give the new model an impressively quiet driving quality for a small car.

The car was designed and developed in Europe. Its Chinese production will begin by the end of 2008 at Changan Ford Mazda Auto's plant in Nanjing that already started operations in September with an initial annual capacity of 160,000 cars.

In 2007, Ford Motor sold 216,324 units in China, a 30% year-on-year increase. Ford increased its sales during the first quarter of 2008 in China by 47% to 90,791 units thanks largely to the growing demand for its Focus compacts.