Diksia.com - Ford has officially ended production of the Fiesta after 47 years. First introduced in 1976, the car was last manufactured on July 7, 2023.
The last two series Fiestas remain in the company. The former will join the company’s international Heritage fleet, based at their facility in Cologne, Germany, where models are manufactured, while others are tied to the UK Heritage fleet.
Martin Sander, general manager of Ford Model E Europe, said production of the eighth-generation Fiesta has been halted because the brand needs factory space to produce the forthcoming Ford Explorer electric SUV.
“We have decided to build our first electric vehicle in large numbers in Cologne. At some point we needed space to build because we had converted the Fiesta factory into a fully battery powered factory. That’s why we had to make the decision.” “We had to stop the production of the Fiesta,” Sander said on Sunday (September 7th, 2023), quoted by Autocar.
The Cologne EV Center, Ford’s first zero-carbon factory, officially opened on June 12.
The Fiesta has consistently featured in the annual list of the top 10 best selling cars in the UK since its launch in 1976, topping the list between 2009 and 2020, the longest streak in consecutive years.
In 2021, however, the Fiesta fell out of the top 10 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the supply chain.
Many manufacturers have been forced to shift their aftermarket inventories from small, less profitable cars to the richer crossovers and SUVs.
When Ford temporarily halted orders for the Fiesta in June 2022, it said a semiconductor shortage had left the car with a six-month backlog.
While the Puma crossover has practically replaced the Fiesta, it will be the best-selling model in the UK in 2021 and the fourth best-selling model in the country in 2022.
That hasn’t diminished the Fiesta’s popularity, however, as the model has consistently been in the top 10 best sellers in the UK for the first five months of 2023 and continues to be the number one choice in the used car market.
The Fiesta is one of several long-term Ford models that have been discontinued as the brand prepares for full-scale electrification, following the launch of the latest S-Max and Galaxy MPVs in April 2023 and production of the Focus hatchback in the year to be discontinued in 2025.
The company expects to sell 600,000 electric vehicles annually by 2026 as part of its Ford Model E division, which operates separately from its ICE car and commercial vehicle divisions (Ford Blue and Ford Pro, respectively). Ford had previously stated that it would only sell electric vehicles in Europe from 2030.
