The parents have acquired an H plate Fiesta, 5 door 1.1lx with about 40k on the dial. Logbook has Ford Motor Co as the first owner, along with a note saying the car was declared as first used abroad. It was subsequently sold on for private use in the UK, but by what looks to have been a private dealership, rather than a Ford franchise. It appears, to my untrained eye, to be rather standard, in a nice shade of metallic maroon with manual glass sunroof and no obvious oddities. I presume all the RHD examples were built in Dagenham, with the Spanish and German output all LHD? Any thoughts on where it might have started its been or what it might have been up to? Did Ford regularly retain vehicles which were then sold on to the public? Any wisdom received with great interest!
Hi. I used to have a K plate 1.1 LX Fiesta. I bought mine from a non-franchised dealer at 3 months old, it had 1000 miles on the clock.
Mine was 1st used abroad (can't remember the wording on the log book). At the time I bought mine, a lot of Fords were used on the car hire fleets in the Channel Islands for a short time before being sold in the UK. Mine was one of these cars. When I viewed mine it still had its Guernsey number plates. The dealer registered it with the DVLA on a local registration plate (of the correct year) before I picked it up.
When the cars came to the UK, they were sold at auction. That's how a lot of them ended up for sale at non-ford dealers.
Your parents Fiesta may well have been "Ex Channel Islands" too.
It was very common at the time for the garage adverts in the papers to include the phrase "Ex Channel Islands). They might have still been registered to the Ford Motor Compary while on hire in the Channel Islands
I remember despite it "only" being a 1.1 OHV engine, that it went like a rocket. The interior was nicely finished. It had a good 4 speaker RDS radio cassette. The standard sunroof popped up at the back using a rotary hand-wheel.
I was most impressed with mine.
Hope your parents enjoy theirs.
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