Saturday, January 9, 2016
Thanks for Following and We'll See You Down the Road
Thank you readers, for all your views and good feedback on The Last Manual Transmission. I'm taking a hiatus from this blog as life is turning a new chapter for me in many senses this year. I'm leaving the government to go work for the commercial sector, but not until after I go traveling for a while to Australia then Europe. After 2015 I need some time to decompress. So I'm off to start another, different blog, based on the last ten years of my life and work in Washington, DC. We'll see you somewhere either on the track or down the road again. Warm Regards.
Finding my New Daily Driver- the Ford Fiesta ST
I originally published this in January 2015 after I purchased my Fiesta ST, but had to rewrite it from scratch due to formatting difficulties via blogger. In the original posting the font was simply too small to read, particularly on mobile, and I was unable to correct this using blogger's tools.
So here goes again...a year later but never too late.
10 years ago I would not have dreamed of buying an American car. Things have changed drastically in the last decade. After not being on the auto market for many years I ended up buying two cars in 2014. The first was the Porsche. But then I left my old job and accepted a new position that is about a 25 minute drive from home. I go entirely against traffic both ways, and part of that via EZ Pass express lanes; in Washington, DC that's not a bad commute at all as we have some of the worst traffic congestion in the United States.
My new job is not on public transport so the bottom line was that I needed a daily driver commuter car. The Porsche wasn't going to work for this. So I started looking for a commuter last fall and found it fun to shop around, read reviews, and go test driving. There is a lot of good information on the internet that one can avoid depending on dealers too much when doing your research.
Having been a CRX owner years back I thought hard about the Honda CR-Z but heard and read many negative things about it. The biggest detractor was that it was described over and over again as pedestrian and under-powered. I almost went and test drove one but knew that it wouldn't live up to my CRX that I had loved so much. Sales of the CR-Z are in the toilet, reviews were poor, and it just isn't a responsive, small performance car, which is what I was after.
What I really needed in a daily driver were qualities like good mileage, low maintenance, reasonable price, good safety record, and and yet something that kicked and had power, and was fun to drive. After lots of research I narrowed in on the Ford Fiesta ST (ST not surprisingly stands for Sport Technology) Both the written and video reviews were astonishing. I was not expecting that.
Way back in the 1970s my cousin had one of the original Fiestas that looked like a square box on wheels, similar to this one:
As I recall it was kind of a clunker, as were many of the first economy cars produced all over the world. In the same vein and in the interest of fuel economy amidst the oil crisis in the 1970s, my parents bought a blue Pontiac Astre in 1975 or 1976. It was an awful car. We called it the ash tray: it ran, but was jerky and whenever my parents would start it up in the garage the unleaded exhaust smell and blue smoke pouring out of its tailpipe would overwhelm you. The Astre was the Pontiac version of the Chevy Vega, and it seemed like General Motors put it on the market too early with major kinks still remaining in the design and performance. GM ceased its production in 1977. Of course, the American auto industry was at a low point then, and a joke at that time went that FORD = found on road dead. This is when I started to dislike American cars.
But now it's 2015. The Detroit auto manufacturers are going through a Renaissance thanks to a changing global economy, significant restructuring of their business practices, and great leadership such as Ford's President and CEO, Mark Fields, a Harvard Business School graduate. So it was time to give the American car makers another try.
One Saturday last November I test drove a 2015 Fiesta ST at a local dealership. It was bright orange with bright orange and gray Recaro seats, which were part of an upgraded package you could choose. I loved the Recaro seats but not the color. Fortunately they also came in solid gray. More importantly I loved the car's design, the way it handled for something so small, how quiet it was inside, how solid it felt, and the driver interface layout. I didn't need the bright orange color scheme, but over the next weeks honed in on tuxedo black, which had a pretty metallic tint to it, and gray Recaro seats.
Did I mention the ST is available only with a manual transmission? My kind of car.
I thought about trying to get my hands on a used 2014 model because I had never bought a new car from a dealership in my entire life. But it turned out that a used one was impossible to find. Ebay had none. After searching around extensively on cars.com and autotrader.com, I found there were a total of forty used 2014 STs listed for sale in the entire United Stated. I emailed four dealers all the way from Kentucky to California who claimed to have the car I wanted, and none of them would send pictures. Two said they had already sold those particular VINs they had advertised while another admitted that theirs was still being delivered from an auction and there were no actual pictures to share yet. I asked a dealer in California how much it would cost to have one shipped to me, and I was quoted $2000.00 for delivery to Virginia. Robbery. All this research led me to discover that the Fiesta ST is not only popular but has good resale value too. People are after them, which makes sense because they are one of the best performing cars at the lower priced end of that market. This would mean an advantage if I bought one then decided to sell it. The more I looked, the more it became apparent that the ST had a real following: I discovered several active ST forums, videos, reviews, and discussion on the net. All positive.
So I ended up buying new - a black 2015 ST, fully loaded with all options.
I bought it from Joel Bartling at Ted Britt Ford in Fairfax, Virginia. Joel is the Dude-- a sports car guru who knows everything about the ST from top to bottom. In fact, he knows an awful lot about Mustangs, Corvettes, and many other performance autos. My husband and I had a ton of fun talking cars with him and he was very easy going and outstanding to work with.
There was one minor but solvable issue the the new ST: they ship only with Bridgestone Potenza summer tires with no other choice available from the factory. These are good tires of course, but weren't going to work for the five to six months of the year that we have cold, rainy slush and occasional snow. So I ordered my favorite Michelin Pilot All Seasons from tirerack.com and they showed up on my doorstep the next day.
Joel had a Ford technician install them for me, and then I sold the Bridgestones on eBay the following week to a buyer in Georgia. I had never sold tires before on eBay but it was easy. We just had to haul them over to FedEx and stuck a prepaid label on each tire with a sticky sleeve and lots of sticky tape.
The ST is great and I love it. It has to be because I'll be spending a lot of time in it. As for the mechanical and other details of the ST itself, see my posting from Sunday, December 6, 2015.
So here goes again...a year later but never too late.
10 years ago I would not have dreamed of buying an American car. Things have changed drastically in the last decade. After not being on the auto market for many years I ended up buying two cars in 2014. The first was the Porsche. But then I left my old job and accepted a new position that is about a 25 minute drive from home. I go entirely against traffic both ways, and part of that via EZ Pass express lanes; in Washington, DC that's not a bad commute at all as we have some of the worst traffic congestion in the United States.
My new job is not on public transport so the bottom line was that I needed a daily driver commuter car. The Porsche wasn't going to work for this. So I started looking for a commuter last fall and found it fun to shop around, read reviews, and go test driving. There is a lot of good information on the internet that one can avoid depending on dealers too much when doing your research.
Having been a CRX owner years back I thought hard about the Honda CR-Z but heard and read many negative things about it. The biggest detractor was that it was described over and over again as pedestrian and under-powered. I almost went and test drove one but knew that it wouldn't live up to my CRX that I had loved so much. Sales of the CR-Z are in the toilet, reviews were poor, and it just isn't a responsive, small performance car, which is what I was after.
What I really needed in a daily driver were qualities like good mileage, low maintenance, reasonable price, good safety record, and and yet something that kicked and had power, and was fun to drive. After lots of research I narrowed in on the Ford Fiesta ST (ST not surprisingly stands for Sport Technology) Both the written and video reviews were astonishing. I was not expecting that.
Way back in the 1970s my cousin had one of the original Fiestas that looked like a square box on wheels, similar to this one:
As I recall it was kind of a clunker, as were many of the first economy cars produced all over the world. In the same vein and in the interest of fuel economy amidst the oil crisis in the 1970s, my parents bought a blue Pontiac Astre in 1975 or 1976. It was an awful car. We called it the ash tray: it ran, but was jerky and whenever my parents would start it up in the garage the unleaded exhaust smell and blue smoke pouring out of its tailpipe would overwhelm you. The Astre was the Pontiac version of the Chevy Vega, and it seemed like General Motors put it on the market too early with major kinks still remaining in the design and performance. GM ceased its production in 1977. Of course, the American auto industry was at a low point then, and a joke at that time went that FORD = found on road dead. This is when I started to dislike American cars.
 |
| An ad for the 1975 Pontiac Astre |
But now it's 2015. The Detroit auto manufacturers are going through a Renaissance thanks to a changing global economy, significant restructuring of their business practices, and great leadership such as Ford's President and CEO, Mark Fields, a Harvard Business School graduate. So it was time to give the American car makers another try.
One Saturday last November I test drove a 2015 Fiesta ST at a local dealership. It was bright orange with bright orange and gray Recaro seats, which were part of an upgraded package you could choose. I loved the Recaro seats but not the color. Fortunately they also came in solid gray. More importantly I loved the car's design, the way it handled for something so small, how quiet it was inside, how solid it felt, and the driver interface layout. I didn't need the bright orange color scheme, but over the next weeks honed in on tuxedo black, which had a pretty metallic tint to it, and gray Recaro seats.
Did I mention the ST is available only with a manual transmission? My kind of car.
I thought about trying to get my hands on a used 2014 model because I had never bought a new car from a dealership in my entire life. But it turned out that a used one was impossible to find. Ebay had none. After searching around extensively on cars.com and autotrader.com, I found there were a total of forty used 2014 STs listed for sale in the entire United Stated. I emailed four dealers all the way from Kentucky to California who claimed to have the car I wanted, and none of them would send pictures. Two said they had already sold those particular VINs they had advertised while another admitted that theirs was still being delivered from an auction and there were no actual pictures to share yet. I asked a dealer in California how much it would cost to have one shipped to me, and I was quoted $2000.00 for delivery to Virginia. Robbery. All this research led me to discover that the Fiesta ST is not only popular but has good resale value too. People are after them, which makes sense because they are one of the best performing cars at the lower priced end of that market. This would mean an advantage if I bought one then decided to sell it. The more I looked, the more it became apparent that the ST had a real following: I discovered several active ST forums, videos, reviews, and discussion on the net. All positive.
So I ended up buying new - a black 2015 ST, fully loaded with all options.
I bought it from Joel Bartling at Ted Britt Ford in Fairfax, Virginia. Joel is the Dude-- a sports car guru who knows everything about the ST from top to bottom. In fact, he knows an awful lot about Mustangs, Corvettes, and many other performance autos. My husband and I had a ton of fun talking cars with him and he was very easy going and outstanding to work with.
There was one minor but solvable issue the the new ST: they ship only with Bridgestone Potenza summer tires with no other choice available from the factory. These are good tires of course, but weren't going to work for the five to six months of the year that we have cold, rainy slush and occasional snow. So I ordered my favorite Michelin Pilot All Seasons from tirerack.com and they showed up on my doorstep the next day.
 | ||
| Michelins delivered to my front door, pronto |
Joel had a Ford technician install them for me, and then I sold the Bridgestones on eBay the following week to a buyer in Georgia. I had never sold tires before on eBay but it was easy. We just had to haul them over to FedEx and stuck a prepaid label on each tire with a sticky sleeve and lots of sticky tape.
 |
| The Bridgestones at FedEx on their way to Georgia |
The ST is great and I love it. It has to be because I'll be spending a lot of time in it. As for the mechanical and other details of the ST itself, see my posting from Sunday, December 6, 2015.
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