1995 Ford Fiesta Azure 5 Door review from UK and Ireland

The steering was vague and had an alarming inch of free play from day one. amazingly it never failed an MOT on this.

The car was frighteningly sluggish with the extra weight and catalyst making performance and economy a joke.

The rear shock absorbers failed twice. Once at 30000 miles and again at 58000 miles, fitted ford OE parts too.

The car used about 1 liter of oil every 1000 miles, and this was deeply worrying seeing as it had a catalyst as the engine had no leaks, it was being burned.

There were numerous small electrical faults, such as the interior courtesy light catching fire. The radio tape player had a mind of its own.

No matter how many times we had it tracked the inside edges of the front tires always wore badly - it was like this from when we took delivery.

The drivers door lock failed about a day after delivery, this was replaced, then the passenger lock failed, then the boot lock.

The quality of the paint was very poor, it scratched as soon as you looked at it, and bird poop ate it!

This was my fourth Ford fiesta, having had a MK 1 which covered 150,000 miles with no real problems. A MK 2 which covered 101,000 miles (and I still see it about) and another MK 2 I had to buy as an emergency stop gap when my Rover 200 Gsi Gearbox failed within 4 hours of delivery from the dealer (nice one Fred Coupe Nissan - ("it must be the way you drive sir, no one sticks to 30 MPH"). This last one cost me £40 and had half an exhaust, and yet it lasted for weeks and never failed to start once.

I was therefore more than a little dismayed with the reliability of this MK 3 car. And the sad thing is whilst I replaced this with a lovely Renault Laguna (heater matrix went) I have since gone out and bought a H reg 1.1 Pop Plus Fiesta with 40,000 miles (one owner from new). And whilst its got more "oomph" than the N reg one (no catalyst you see) its already starting to give me annoying little problems...