Bye bye Fiesta

I am not particularly interested in cars. I have one small car for personal use and a pick up truck which is the workhorse of our farm. However, I did notice the story today that Ford will stop producing the Fiesta next year. It reminded me of my first election campaign back in 1982 in Whickham South ward in Gateshead. All out elections meant we had 3 candidates in the ward and one of them was a motoring journalist who got to try out vehicles before writing about them. At the start of the campaign he was driving a Lada. This was in the days when Lada as a brand was regarded as something of a joke. By the end of the campaign he was driving a Ford Fiesta with a Lotus engine. It could do 0 to 30 mph in a fraction of a second. I had never experienced the sensation of being sucked into a car seat under extreme acceleration before (or since). Alas, this motoring experience was not enough to win us any of the 3 seats in the ward. It was another 4 years before a Lib Dem won (in those days we were SDP). And it was another year after than before I was elected in 1987 (though I've been there since). Quite what happened to the Ford Fiesta and Lotus engine, I do not know.