As many Americans may come to realize, there are just a certain number of cars that aren’t available stateside. We just have to resort to drooling over the internet pondering to ourselves why don’t manufactures just bring it over to the American market. Well there are many reasons but we’ll get to that later. But for the Ford Motor Company, the Ford Fiesta is something that we just haven’t heard of yet. Till my recent trip to Las Vegas I was fortunate to get a first hand look and test drive of the latest Ford Fiesta and what a surprise it was.

Whether you know it or not the Ford Fiesta has been around for decades in the European market but not across the pond for reasons I’m not even sure of till recently. Ford has been testing the waters for several months with a marketing campaign called the “Fiesta Movement” geared to putting the idea of a small, economic gas saver to fill the gap between the sporty-ness of the mustang to the gas –guzzling behemoth trucks that they produce; long gone are the ideas of BIG, over-powering vehicles. During our time at SEMA Ford brought over a dozen or so European –spec Fiestas for Journalist, and exhibitors of SEMA to check out.

Fords Campaign right now, is that very few Ford cars on Europe’s roads are familiar to Americans. Converging global tastes make “global cars” possible where they might not have been before, Ford has been changing their idea as drivers everywhere are shifting towards, smaller, more fuel-thrifty vehicles. And they’re also interested in style – even in the least-expensive cars.

Ford’s European models already exhibit great fuel economy and much more eye-catching designs than we see here in the U.S. That means that, for Ford, the center of the world is shifting to the Continent.

So let’s get right to it, as tested Ford brought over the 5spd Automatic mated to a 1.4liter engine producing a whopping 98 horses, with the 5spd manual having a bit more oomph with 125horsepowers. The look and feel of the car was very basic for a car in the price range of $12 to $17 thousand dollar range; the European spec version though has a totally different vibe to what you would see on the roads today in the States, very unique. But there were some flaws as I notice in the automatic version , as the transmission had a hard time keeping up with my heavy right foot as it just couldn’t find the right gears during my test drive. The Fiesta falls in to place as a direct competition with the Honda Fit, and the Toyota Yaris.

Overall it’s a great commuter car for around town and highways, as it averages a claimed 35 to 40mpg. Price hasn’t been set yet, but it should be around the ball park of the $12 to $17 thousand. Lets just hope that Ford doesn’t water down the Fiesta like most manufactures do and give us a crappy USDM(U.S domestic market) model.

Fiesta will have a range of 3 different models , as the one tested was the bottom of the range, the top of the line Fiesta will be given a 170hp engine , which should bump up performance, and give the Fiesta its peppiness. Look forward to it hitting stateside around 2011.