Ford may not have even finished testing the Fiesta facelift that is expected to bow at the Paris Motor Show in the latter part of 2012, but Autointernationaal.nl has published a report revealing that work has already started on the next generation Fiesta in Europe.
The report says that Ford has tasked 500 engineers in Cologne, Germany to develop the next generation Fiesta. The release date of the model is speculated as 2015.
Ford may have reason to believe that the current Fiesta can't compete beyond 2015 as the competition would have raised the bar. By 2015, we'll get to see a new Honda Jazz on the market and the sales fate of Nissan's sporty hatchback, previewed by the Invitation Concept shown at Geneva, using capacity at its Sunderland plant in Britain, will be out.
Volkswagen's world domination plans includes the launch of the next generation Polo built on the MQB Platform that is expected to be considerably better in space utilization and fuel economy. In recent years, the competition has updated products in the form of the Sonic and Yaris. The new Fiesta has been on the market since 2008, and would have lived a complete life by 2015. There's nothing contrary we can find that proves this report is inaccurate.
Styling debates may rage on how more aggressive the design can get. The Fiesta could grow marginally in size but fuel consumption will be brought down with the introduction of the 1-liter Ecoboost engine that is expected to completely phase out the older four cylinder engines. An 80 hp naturally aspirated petrol engine is expected to propel the basic variants while the 1.5-liter diesel engine introduced on the Indian Fiesta could be extended to other markets even on the new model.
Another interesting bit of information is Ford may give the 3-door variant a miss and manufacture only 5-door variants.
Once the Fiesta facelift is out on the market, we'll hopefully see Ford testing out prototypes of the 2015 Ford Fiesta around the world.
[Source - Autointernationaal.nl]
