Road Test: Ford Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost 125ps

Price as tested: POA

+ Slick styling, brilliant engine, classy cabin, handling
– 100ps and 125ps EcoBoost versions won't be cheap
= Updates put the Fiesta right back at the top of the small car tree

Cinecitta Studios lies just on the outskirts of Rome and has been home, over the years, to productions as famous os Ben-Hur, Cleopatra and The Gangs Of New York. When choosing to launch an updated version of the Ford Fiesta, so bursting with new technology that it could not be more bang up to date, it might seem odd to have it sit in front of a fake recreation of the Roman Senate. But hey, maybe Ford has just looking for a little reflected glory from the likes of Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Certainly, the updated Fiesta looks glamorous enough to bestride a film set. That new grille (very Aston Martin-ish), lights and bumpers have really freshened up the shape.

Inside, much effort has gone into improving cabin quality and the results are palpably good. Before, you would have had to place the Fiesta just behind the likes of the Volkswagen Polo in the interior quality stakes. Now it's neck-and-neck.

From the mobile phone and media player-linking SYNC system (that recently debuted on the new B-Class mini MPV) to a new function called MyKey (long since on sale in American Fords) which allows nervous parents to limit the speed, audio volume and other functions of the car when their teenage offspring have borrowed it, the Fiesta can now be specified to levels that would have seemed ludicrous when the 1977 original was launched. A self-braking city safety system, a function that automatically phones the emergency services in the event of an accident and niceties such as a reversing camera and an automated parking system are now all available, for a price.

Indeed, you'd have to ask if Ford is backing the wrong horse – investing in high-tech gizmos at a time when most buyers are looking more closely at the bottom line and rivals like Dacia are arriving with arrestingly low-balled prices. I asked; Ford said no. All its research points to customers wanting more and more technology in the car.

Ford's award-winning 1.0-litre, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine has already found happy homes in the Focus and B-Max, but the Fiesta is surely the car best suited to the lightweight, frugal, free-revving little unit. For the first time, you'll be able to buy an EcoBoost unit that doesn't use a turbocharger, and the new 65bhp and 80bhp versions of the engine will eventually replace the ageing 1.25-litre Yahamha-developed unit at the base of the Fiesta range. Punchier 100bhp and 125bhp versions, with a turbo, will be rarer by far in Irish dealerships but sadly, that's all that Ford made available for us to drive on this event.

I say sadly, actually it was terrific. In 123bhp form (a version which still scores a 99g/km Co2 rating and can, claims Ford, average better than 65mpg) the turbo EcoBoost almost qualifies as a junior hot hatch. There's a touch of off-boost lethargy below 1,900rpm but after that the little engine revs smoothly and crisply to the 6,500rpm redline and theres's a thick seam of effortless 170Nm torque to revel in on the way there. Even with just a five-speed gearbox, it's an effortless drive and maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a hint of Porsche-like roar as you pass 4,000rpm.

As ever, the Fiesta's chassis is up for any challenges you throw at it, and the updated electric power steering is better than ever – firmly sprung and rewardingly talkative, it goes beautifully with the Fiesta's neutral balance and grip. Even on roads streaming with heavy rain and peppered with aggressive Roman traffic, the Fiesta never felt less than confidence inspiring, and frequently felt just damned good fun.

Alongside the EcoBoost units and the carry-over 1.25 petrol, Ford will also offer a new 1.5-litre TDCI diesel and two updated versions of the existing 1.6-litre diesel, the most efficient of which emits just 87g/km. Prices will start from €15,550 for the most basic 1.25 and you can expect the 99bhp EcoBoost turbo to clock in around the €17,500 mark.

Bringing the test car back to Cinecitta was a slightly bizarre experience what with having to thread the Fiesta between sets, semi-abandoned props and the occasional film-set statue that had be placed next to a car park. There was even a complete TGV-style train, marooned on tracks that go nowhere, presumably to give future Cary Grants and Tom Cruises a convincing set for railway-based action.

Thankfully, the Fiesta is no film-set fake. It’s a car of true style and substance, with a delightful chassis and, with the brilliant EcoBoost engine, real star quality.

Ford Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost 125ps
Price as tested: TBA
Price range: €15,550 to €TBA
Capacity: 999cc
Power: 123bhp
Torque: 170Nm
Top speed: 170kmh
0-100kmh: 9.4sec
Economy: 4.2l-100km (67mpg)
CO2 emissions: 99g/km
Road Tax Band: A2. €180
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 91% adult, 86% child, 65% pedestrian, 71% safety assist.
 

Road Test: BMW 320d SE Touring

Price as tested: €51,930

+ Style, chassis, practicality, comfort, economy, performance; everything really
– Engine too noisy around town. That's it.
= As close to perfection as currently mechanically possible.



They. They are omnipresent. They are all-knowing. They are the They who show up in every pub conversation, They are the true and all-seeing know-alls of the universe. You know, the They in "They say that..."

Well, They say that perfection is unattainable in nature. To which I say, well, what about Scarlett Johansson? And perhaps more pertinently for a motoring website, what about the new BMW 3 Series Touring?

Now, perfection is a dangerous word for any critic to use. It essentially paints you into a corner, as if this thing here is perfect, then what about the next thing, which may be even better again. Do we need to have a graduated system of perfection? A Johansson scale, as it were?

BMW's mighty 3 Series has always been pretty high up the scale of perfection, certainly since the iconic E30 version of the 1980s and the current F30 3 Series is for my money the best one ever. It manages to combine traditional BMW virtues of style, agility and an entertaining driving experience with a level of comfort and refinement that few other cars, indeed few other BMWs, can match.

And here's the Touring version, the estate, which really and truly pushes all my buttons. Now, I know many of you still dismiss estates as Brewery Rep's cars and you'd all rather be seen in your trendy compact SUVs. To which I say, good luck to you and enjoy the fuel bills. I'll be happy in my wagon.

To turn the regular 3 Series into a Touring, BMW has really been doing its homework. The expected separate opening glass rear window, a feature pioneered by the original E30 Touring, is there as ever, while the main tailgate is now electrically powered as standard. A shame that; electric 'gates are just an annoyance in my book. Why not just offer it as a no-cost option? Still, the boot once open is large (495-litres, which BMW claims is a best-in-class figure), square and luxuriously carpeted. The sill is just 620mm off the ground the the standard stainless steel scuff plate should keep dings and scratches in the paint work down to a minimum.

The rear seats split into three 40:20:40 sections and if you fold everything flat, there's 1,500-litres of load space. Practical, then.

Up front, it looks and feels the same as any 3 Series, which is to say really rather wonderful. I've heard complaints from some quarters that the cabin looks too plain or too similar to the previous E90 3 Series, but to that I say just take a long journey in one. Then, when you've noticed the spot-on driving position, the comfy seats, the space, the clear dials and the general air of purposefulness, get back to me.

Sufficient eulogies to the brilliance of the 181bhp 2.0-litre turbo diesel engine found herein have been written that future archaeologists will be forced to conclude that there was at one time a church that deified a Munich-built oil-burning engine, so it's enough here to say that it remains powerful, smooth and very efficient. Thanks to the now-expected battery of EfficientDynamics technologies, you should easily enough be able to match the claimed 5.1-litres per 100km fuel consumtion figure, That's mid-fifties in MPG, and I managed low forties bombing around with the sport setting on the gearbox activated. Select the Eco Pro mode and you should do better still.

If there is a chink in the armour of perfection though, it's in the engine. Simply put, refinement is not quite all it should be. On the main road, at a cruise, it's fine, blending seamlessly into the background. But around town, especially from cold, and it just growls and gurgles a bit too much, an effect heightened by the otherwise excellent 8-speed automatic transmission, which tends to hunt around for cogs at low speeds.

Still, if that's enough to put you off then you'll never sample the 320d's greatest party trick. In the past, BMWs would always wow you with sharp steering, iron-fisted body control and an entertaining attitude to wet roundabouts, but then punish you when the road got bumpy, something that got progressively worse from 2002 onwards when the runflat tyre systems arrived. Now though, you'll be pitching your 3 Series down a favourite back road, revelling in the steering and chassis balance when a traditional Irish pothole will appear. You'll brace yourself for the impact, getting your wince face ready and then... nothing. The car will glide over the cratered surface as if it isn't there. Wonderful.

And that, to me at any rate, is why the 3 Touring flirts so closely with perfection. It's that combination of talents, that blending into one of sports car, family car and practical holdall. You can drop the kids to school, clean out the garage and go for an invigorating spin on a challenging road, all in one morning, all without changing cars.

Perfect? Not quite, but probably as close as They will allow.

BMW 320d SE Touring
Price as tested: €51,930
Range price: €36,620 to €52,120
Capacity: 1,995cc
Power: 181bhp
Torque: 560Nm
Top speed: 250kmh
0-100kmh: 5.6sec
Economy: 5.1-100km (55.4mpg)
CO2 emissions: 135g/km
Tax Band: B. €225 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 95% adult, 84% child, 78% pedestrian, 86% safety assist

Road Test: Lexus GS450h F-Sport

Price as tested: €72,950

+ Drivetrain, refinement, comfort, chassis balance, quality
– Silly grille, numb steering
= The best hybrid we’ve yet driven


Here’s a funny thing. Lexus can’t tell me how much torque the new GS450h has. Nerdy fact that it is, a healthy torque figure is deeply significant for driving both relaxed and invigorating. A lack of torque is inimical to fun and lots of it gives you that lovely, deep-down thumpy feeling as you accelerate hard out of a tight corner. It’s what makes American V8s so addictive and its absence is what makes small petrol engines such hard work. Normally you just look up the figure, either in Newton-Metres (Nm) or foot-pounds (lb-ft) in a car’s technical data list. And it’s not that the GS has no torque; quite the opposite. You can feel its presence every time you tap the throttle.

The thing is that the GS450h, a hybrid as was its predecessor and almost every other Lexus, draws its torque from two sources. A 3.5-litre V6 petrol with 352Nm and an electric motor with 275Nm. Add the two together and you get a fairly tyre-shredding 627Nm or about what you’d get from a 1970s Can Am racer...

It’s not that simple though, says Lexus and I seriously doubt that the GS ever gets the full combined 627Nm or the rear Bridgestones wouldn’t be long for this world. Instead, the fearsomely clever computer management system (which can presumably calculate lunar orbit trajectories and file your tax returns) juggles and apportions the power and torque outputs of the two motors until you have an essentially seamless whole.

Now, hybrids have been criticised in the past, and frequently on these pages, for not being up to snuff. The idea of backing up a downsized petrol engine with an electric motor seems entirely sensible and effective, but never in the past have we driven a hybrid that either lived up to its fuel economy claims or gave us much in the way of driving pleasure. (The Honda CR-Z gets a by here because it’s fun in spite of being a hybrid.) The old GS450h was fun enough in a straight-line, drags-strip kind of way, its combination of petrol and electric grunt sufficient to hurl it up the road in a most uneconomical fashion, but it felt a bit lead-footed in handling terms and its economy and emissions were soon out-classed by the new hordes of hyper-efficient diesels.

This GS then, has rather a lot to prove, both as a hybrid and as a car. Can a hybrid ever match or beat the latest diesels in economy and emissions terms? Can Lexus produce a truly convincing challenger to the likes of the BMW 5 Series?

Well, you certainly can’t accuse Lexus of keeping its light under a bushel this time around. The new GS, when seen from the back and side is crisply handsome and subtly muscular. And that new grille, with its chrome fangs? Well, I can certainly see what Lexus was trying to do – to inject both distinctiveness and aggression, but for my money it just doesn’t work. It look inelegant and a bit OTT. A shame.

There’s better news on the inside though, where the previous GS’s slight sense of clunkiness is banished by a very slick and stylish cabin, with beautifully simple, clear instruments, a big central screen for controlling the infotainment and HVAC systems and a distinctly inviting sense of comfort and style. The seats a big, comfy and supportive. The space in the rear seats is excellent. I love the way that, when you push the Sport button, the instruments switch from a charging metre to a red-lit rev counter.

Way out back, boot space has dramatically improved. In the last GS, the hybrid system’s batteries ate so deeply into the luggage room that you were left with a narrow slot that wouldn’t hold very much at all. Now, thanks to better packaging, there’s a decent (if not class leading) 482-litres. That’s better.

Slip behind the wheel and push the starter button and there’s the usual hybrid car silence as the batteries take the strain for the initial few metres. When the 3.5-litre 292bhp petrol V6 engine comes to life, you’ll struggle to notice it. The usual Lexus superlatives of refinement and noise suppression apply.

Where that V6 really makes itself felt and heard is when you accelerate hard. We’ve become so used, over the past few years, to big executive cars being exclusively diesel-powered, so the crisp, sharp-edged snarl of the GS’s engine as it passes 4,000rpm (the point at which most diesels just give up and go home) is as refreshing as lemon zest and just as tasty. Combined with the batteries and electric bits, it makes for a very satisfying drivetrain to use, probably the best hybrid we’ve ever tried. There never seems to be a gap in the power, or a step when one system or the other dominates. The CVT gearbox doesn’t seem to suffer from the same problems that afflict over continously variable ‘boxes, such as letting the engine needlessy blare its head off at high rpm when accelerating. And it’s decently economical too. Lexus claims 6.0-litres per 100km on the combined cycle, which you probably won’t get near, but we averaged mid-sevens and that’s about what you’d get out of a comparable 3.0-litre diesel. Impressive.

Impressive too that emissions have been kept down to a Band B-friendly 139g/km, so you can match a BMW 520d buyer for tax smugness while matching a 535d for performance. That’s quite a combination, and it’s nice to notice how often the car automatically kicks into EV mode, not just when cruising around town, but also on the open road. It makes you feel like it was worth going down the hybrid route, even if in reality, a constantly-running diesel is little less efficient.

Our F-Sport spec test car came with option four-wheel-steering, and eighties Japanese obsession that seems to be making something of a comeback. I can honestly say that, in spite of trying, I could never actually feel the rear wheels doing anything much, but there’s no doubting that the GS felt unusually agile and chuckable for such a big car. A shame that the steering is too remote and distant for you to truly enjoy punting it along, but there’s no doubt that a pretty terrific chassis dwells beneath; an achievement made even more impressive when you remember that the GS’s is still packing the extra weight of all those batteries. Impressive too that the ride quality is generally excellent, only occasionally feeling too firm and mostly just cosseting nicely.

At €72,950, the F-Sport’s rear-steer and sporty bodykit and wheels may seem a bit of an extravagance over the cost of a €59,950 Executive model, but there’s no doubt that for the first time, Lexus has really hit the 5 Series market dead-on. It won’t be to the tastes of the me-too hordes who will only ever buy German at this price level, but here at least is a hybrid that’s a frugal as it should be and as invigorating to drive as you’d hope. Here is a Lexus of true character and enjoyment, as well as the expected quality and refinement.

Lexus GS450h F-Sport
Price: €72,950
Range price: €59,950 to €76,250
Capacity: 3,456cc
Power: 345bhp
Torque: See text
Top speed: 250kmh
0-100kmh: 5.9sec
Economy: 6.0-100km (47.0mpg)
CO2 emissions: 139g/km
Tax Band: B. €225 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: Not yet tested