Zetec S 1.6 3dr

Fun afford motoring for a teenager

I got my Fiesta Zetec S in January this year. Since then I've covered 6000 miles and feel I know enough about it now to give it a write up. For starters, the handling is exceptional. I've limited driving experience of other cars but it's precise, and gives you confidence despite how light the steering actually feels. The engine's punchy and fairly smooth, and is great for city and country driving, (it also makes a nice throaty sound above 5000 revs). The ride is comfortable, and the standard seats give nice support and the driving position is excellent. The radio and stereo's acceptable. You get an aux port which is a bonus, but annoyingly there's no speakers in the back of mine, as they were only fitted with the Sony system I believe. By the way, if you're thinking of buying a Zetec S, I'd really try to find one with the Sony sound system. My friends fiesta's got one and it's worth searching around for. I do manual work and sometimes need the car for tip runs, etc, and the car's surprisingly practical, you really can get a lot in it.

I've found the gear change to be a little crunchy, (that may be to do with the cars age however I've read similar things on other forums), and I do wish the reverse gear had a synchromesh to help with parking up quickly in cities. The thing that annoys me the most about this car is the motorway driving. I've never been in a car that needs a 6th gear quite like this. The ratios make it great for town traffic but at 70MPH it revs at 3500RPM, and it quickly climbs if you go beyond, which makes it a bit annoying on long journeys. The fuel economy is alright, I get about 37mpg with mainly town driving and some motorway journeys. Even when I'm driving very economically I struggle to get more than 40mpg, a lot less than what Ford claims.

For a young driver who doesn't do a lot of long trips, I think this car's perfect. I'm 18 and managed to get my insurance for £1100 without a black box, which is quite reasonable. Mine's all black so it looks very sleek, and the running costs are quite low. I do the oil changes and servicing myself every 6000 miles, and I've bought a set of disks and pads to fit soon, which didn't come to much. I've got the 16 inch wheels, and recently had all the tyres changed, only £70 each for Avons, yet again quite reasonable.

The only issue I have with the car is sometimes the boot won't open unless I press the release button on the key, and sometimes the boot open sign flashes up on the screen 1/2 way through a journey. It seems to be worse in cold weather ? It's only happened a handful of times, but is quite annoying and is a common fault with the early mk7 fiestas.

All in all, the Zetec S is cheap, reliable, fun, quick, good looking and practical, and I would definitely recommend it.

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