Why The Mk. 7 Fiesta Is The Worst Starter Car

Mk. 7 and 7.5 Fiesta may just be the worst starter car to choose!

When it comes to choosing your first car, with little to no experience in what makes a good car, the chances of you making an unideal choice is rather high. Choosing a Mk. 7 or 7.5 Fiesta is, unfortunately, one of those unideal choices.

A first car should be reliable, stylish, quick, fun and be affordable to insure. The Mk. 7 Fiesta can relate to exactly none of those things. Although undeniably popular, these Fiestas can be considered by some as one of the worst starter cars to introduce you into the world of automobiles and here are some of the reasons as to why some people may think that.

Firstly, they are incredibly expensive to insure. For young drivers, it is often cheaper to get insured on a C-Class Mercedes or a Ranger Rover than it is for their 1.0-litre Fiesta. Perhaps partly because it’s modified or because it has a turbo but mostly because this car has been crashed time and time again by countless young hooligans that insurance companies now deem it incredibly risky to insure.

Now, although insurance may be high, Fiestas are fairly frugal when it comes to fuel and more often than not, quite reliable too. However, there is one specific fault in this little hot hatch and that’s the gear synchros.

Gear synchros, or synchronisers, are responsible for matching the input and output shaft speeds so that the gears don’t shred themselves upon gear changes. Now, it’d be a bad enough fault on any other car but for it to be a weakness in a car predominantly driven by thrill-seeking young drivers is far from optimal. A couple of years of poorly matched gear changes and ragging around the local supermarket car park will soon result in a rather hefty repair bill.

Furthermore, although we love the 90s aesthetic, especially when it comes to JDM cars, no one wants an American hot hatch from the 2010s with an interior that ages like edgy comedy. Stepping into someone’s Fiesta Mk. 7 feels like a trip through time with strange angular buttons in some sort of wing formation sitting on the dash, decorated by enough cheap plastic to warrant a spot in an environmental documentary. Perhaps so many of these Fiestas are wrecked each year because the owners are trying to drive with their eyes close to avoid looking at the interior of their cars. And don’t even get me started on the bottomless black hole found by the handbrake.

Speaking of ageing poorly, who was still putting standard yellow headlights on cars in 2017? Ford. Who skimped out on rear brake callipers and opted for drums instead? Ford. Who decided to put the turbo dump valve in a weird position underneath the car? Ford, that’s who.

Anyway, rant over. Let us know your thoughts, in the comments.

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