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I finally gave up, the little red gremlin is gone! Here's a not so good video time lapse of the last ride, can't do it over again 'cause the car is gone.

Last ride!:

Needed to be sampled more often to slow things down a bit.

Here is the replacement

IMG_3430_zpsbkpjndow.jpg

Roughly the same color. After the 3 different dealers didn't want to work on this car and actually fix things, it was time to give up and ditch it. It was always going to eat tires, only got a bit over 20,000 miles on the stock tires with another 10,000 on the snows. The ford dealer took a hell of a lot better care of me than any Chevy dealer has, so it is very unlikely I will ever buy another GM vehicle again.

I can already tell I'm going to miss flicking my car around corners like a go kart, but I'm sure I'll adapt.

Not going to be coming around as much, but still have moderator duties so I'll be back once in a while to check up on things.

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I'm fixing to do the same thing, and I'm also considering a base Fiesta too. My a/c is now acting like it's low on charge after the recall work was done, the dealer just overfilled my oil after the second recall was done on the pcv valve (probably becouse I mentioned it was burning oil), and nobody seems to know how or wants to work on these cars. I'm fed up with the Spark, too, they're junk. I've tried parking it overnight with the windows down a number of times, nobody even wants to steal it, lol.

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Well good luck :) Hopefully all is well with your Ford, looks nice :) I'm having to rent a car for the long weekend because my Spark is so unreliable it's become a joke.

All summer long I haven't been willing to run my spark out into the mountains because I know it will choke and die just as soon as the cellphone service quits.

My fiesta is actually way up the food chain, almost up to a Titanium, it's the SE with most options because that was the only way to get fog lights and the seat with the lumbar support. With all that comes heated seats, different interior color scheme, heated mirrors, MyFordTouch entertainment system with 6 real speakers, and a spare tire with jack!

The headlights are not as good as the Spark though, found that out tonight.

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WOW GREG! You were always one of the nicest and most helpful people here. I hope u do stick around. I'm absolutely thrilled that you got a Ford Fiesta.

I think that dealerships can vary from place to place....sometimes it's just luck of the draw and some places are crap and other places treat you great. Hopefully it's not a poor reflection on GM Chevrolet as a whole as I think their cars are still great.

Ford has always been my favorite back home, and we had the focus twice....but one dealership was so-so, another was pretty good....one of the focus' had a fuel pump recall but the other focus was perfect!

Not sure if you like to mod your cars a bit but the fiesta is a great handling car and has the same spirit as the Focus.....u can dress it up a bit and it'll look even sweeter! Congrats again. I'm jealous. I really want a Focus RS or a Fiesta ST. I'm sure you've already seen some of the youtube videos of those famous guys doing road tests and races with the Fiesta and it has received HIGH PRAISE from Jeremy Clarkson and the other testers out there.

Edited by cornflakes
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Yeah, the Top Gear guys love the Fiesta ST with its nearly 200 horsepower and better suspension, it would make a fun second vehicle if I had the money.

I have a short shifter already on the way and thinking about some other additions to get the handling up a little. Even though the fiesta is shorter and wider than the Spark, it doesn't corner as well. Or at least not any faster than the Spark and I was expecting it would be a little quicker. Might be a confidence thing since I don't even have 200 miles on it yet. The Spark inspired confidence right off the dealer's lot. It's a great design, just have to get the bugs worked out and get the dealers inline, then maybe bring out a higher powered Spark for the "sports car" enthusiasts.

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Best of luck with the Fiesta. I put 2000 miles on a rental Spark in 3 days, all of it in AZ. It ran perfectly, not a single problem. And I loved the way it drove. I could imagine how much more fun the manual model would be. But everywhere I looked, it was nothing but problems. Mostly with the engine. Emotionally I wanted it. But logically I figured my chances of having problems were pretty high, because of the type of problems being reported. They don't seem like the kind of thing that would affect just a few cars. I figured if I had problems, I would lose a lot of money trading it for something else. I have a good local Chevy dealer, saw the Sonic 1LT automatic sedan on their web site for $3000 under MSRP, and made an impulse decision to buy it. I drove it home the same day I found it. So far so good at 3500 miles.

Neither GM or most of their dealers seem to be taking the Spark seriously. That's to bad. I think they could have a real winner on their hands. Or maybe not. Maybe it would cost to much to build the Spark right, and if they did, the price would go way up. Almost everybody buys the Spark on price alone. I found a lot of other things to like. To bad about the problems.

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Oh really, Greg? Was your spark lowered or stock? I have to say, having owned 2 Ford Focus and now owning a Spark, the Ford car corners WAY BETTER than the Spark. I found the spark to be extremely tipsy due to its higher/taller stance. The Spark is an extremely tall car and it's a compact so that makes it worse. I've never driven in a Fiesta before but having heard about how similar it is to the Focus (just a class lower in size), I figure the Fiesta is going to corner and handle much better than our Sparks.

That's the one thing I miss about my Focus which was superior handling, cornering, and obviously 130 hp stock > 84 hp spark stock.

Yeah, I think once you get settled into the car and learn the feel and new size of it, you'll find cornering will be much better than the Spark. Also, the spark was never created to be a "racing" sort of car or spirit of racing, unless you mod it a bit. The Fiesta and Focus come from a family of rally racing and other racing history so it should have a lot more "sportier" feel to it.

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The fiesta feels a lot heavier, and no my spark was not lowered. The Spark was simple, approach a corner way faster than you should (30mph or no slowing down at all), keep neutral throttle (normally second gear), turn the wheel hard, and around the corner you went with some nice oversteer if you cranked the wheel hard enough (just like a go cart). The fiesta hasn't shown that it will do this yet, the rear axle beam isn't stiff enough for the weight and length. Even fast sweeping corners are no faster than the spark until you get into higher speeds that are difficult with the spark because of the 40 horsepower lower value. They may have changed the suspension in the 2015, it certainly rides over the bumps nicely. The advantage is that there are plenty of parts to modify the fiesta, and fixing/improving is not very expensive.

But all that said, with only 200 miles on the new car, I haven't really wanted to push the engine up where the fun zone starts. Need at least another 300 on it before that can start to happen. And I'll probably put a torsion bar on the rear, and maybe some frame braces to keep everything aligned by the time I get to that mileage. A little more pressure in the tires might help too.

The really good thing is my seat has a good lumbar support, and even after 2 days the pain in my lower back is starting to fade. That alone would have been worth $1000, but a bunch of other options came with that price.

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Good Luck with your new Fiesta....I do like them. Your Fiesta should corner as good as your Spark did, just let the tires "break in" a bit. I had a Focus ZX-3 with Tiger Paw tires and I could take a curve marked 35 mph at 65 mph and it felt rock solid !! I am one of the lucky Spark owners apparently, mine just went over 9,000 miles and not a hint of a problem with it. (2014 model). I would probably take a Mazda 3 over the Fiesta, but I don't think one could go wrong buying a Fiesta. They certainly look sharp and have a nice stance. I do believe that Ford has fixed the dual clutch problems that they were having with the first Fiestas. So....Enjoy your new car there !!

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