By Bryan Redeker

            With more news coming this week about the Fiesta being involved in motorsports, I thought it would be a good idea to express how much that means to the enthusiast community. Racing is where you learn the most about your product. Competition breeds your best engineering. Pushing the limit is when you find failures. What you learn from motorsports trickles down to the production car, and makes it better. Motorsports links the race car to the street car.

            There is something else about motorsports, and why it is important. Back in 2000-03, Ford ran the WRC Focus that closely resembled the ZX3 hatchback that was in my driveway. Watching a car that looks like your car engages you in the action, and makes you feel like you are part of the team. In America, NASCAR cars are so far removed from the production cars, nobody knows what they are. NASCAR is also more about the drivers and not the team nor the car. For sports car and rallye enthusiasts, the cars we watch on TV or see in the magazines look very much like the cars we drive and see on the street. For many of us, we enjoy knowing that what we drive is what others race. There is no connection there in NASCAR, as the cars are really a collection of tubes with some sheetmetal over the top and a sticker to make them either a Ford or a Toyota. Nobody buys a Fusion because it races in NASCAR, but people did buy Focuses because they ran in the WRC. Competing with the Fiesta will do the same.

            Motorsports also creates a name and an image for the product. Seeing a Fiesta going up Pikes Peak, or competing in the X-Games attaches a performance image to the car. That performance image is what car people want. Enthusiasts don’t want a “sport” sticker and some lick-n-stick ground effects to make it looks like a performance car, we want actual competition results. I would be lying if I have not thought about buying a WRX just because of the rally image and wins that comes with the car. I watch a Koni Challenge race, and I get excited about the S197 Mustangs. I go to an American Iron race and watch Jay Andrew’s 1986 Mustang win, and I want to make my Mustang more like his car. In October of 1999, my issue of Sport Compact Car came in the mail with the WRC Focus on the cover. Seeing that, I knew the Focus hatch was my kind of car. Knowing the Fiesta is going to be competing globally, makes me want the car even more. The connection between motorsports and the car I drive is very important, and I won’t buy a product that is not raced. For enthusiasts that connection is why we buy our cars. We want a little race car DNA in what we drive to work Monday thru Friday.