BMW USED CARS

It's
ironic that after 12 years of sales, no one really knows how to pronounce Ford
Ka. Even Ford people mix it between K-A saying the letters separately, Ka with
a short 'a' or Ka as in car. And all this despite the fact that it's racked up
1.4 million global sales, a staggering 500,000 of which have been in the UK.
It's almost like not knowing how to pronounce Coke.

Let's start with a simple truth: no matter what people say, you do not necessarily make a car better by making it faster. Ranges of cars, like sprawling cities, tennis rackets and drunken nights out, have sweet spots. Unexpected, near-perfect moments of goodness where the execution completely marries with the premise, where what you hope for unexpectedly becomes what you get. Want an easy example? The 2.7-litre diesel Jaguar XF with the six-speed automatic gearbox is one of these little moments of quiet brilliance, the gem of the XF range; fast, frugal, a bit swish, comfy, relatively affordable.

This is the finest large sporting saloon in the world. It sits
at the top of a distinguished and expensive heap, including the V10 Audi S8,
the 525bhp Mercedes S63 AMG and the all-new BMW 7-Series V8 twin turbo, and it
trounces them all in different ways.

Whenever and wherever the conversation turns to the Jaguar XF, it's all about the design. Even today, when we show up to drive the thing, the talk begins with the shape of the sheet metal, and the furnishings within.

Standard 19in AMG alloys and beefy side skirts do far better justice to the new S-Class's oddly distended wheelarches, while a huge front apron with outsized air intakes and similarly chunky rear end, broken up by a pair of massive twin exhausts, complete the kind of repackaging that makes you think of borscht and punishment beatings.

But the S65's sales pitch gets skewed again by a £145,365 price tag. To put that into a Merc context, the 'L' version of the S320 CDI is £58,975, while the 500L is £73,770, and that'll still hit 62mph in 5.6 seconds.

On the face of it, a hybrid S-Class shouldn't exist. If anyone wants a slightly-more-economical-than-usual luxury car, they should buy a fractionally smaller (but still pretty ritzy in the overall scheme of things) luxury car like an E-Class. Or an S-Class diesel. Actually, if saving the world were really the priority, the vast expense of developing a car like the S-Class hybrid would be much better spent building tidal electricity generators, or just standing in the town square in Stuttgart and handing out free loft insulation.

While Britain waits with bated wallet for the launch of next year's all-new Fiesta, stop-gap 1.4 and 1.6 Si models have come along, with a strong emphasis on safety and security and a lot less stress on performance compared with the ones they replace.

Externally, the new two have been stripped of go-faster paraphernalia to reduce insurance premiums. Both have enormous new front and rear colour-coded bumpers with integral fog lamps. New aerodynamic door mirrors and melt'n'twist simulated alloy wheel covers complete the external revisions.

Inside, to complement a new range of trims, we find the same old shiny plastic dash and inelegant controls.

The new Fiesta will be available from April 2002 in five-door body style only - at least for the time being. The new car is much longer, wider and taller than the outgoing version and this maximising of interior space is one of the car's big selling points. Trim levels will be the familiar LX, Zetec and Ghia and, prices should be fairly similar to the outgoing range.

Engine-wise, the range starts with the 1.3-litre eight-valve 67bhp petrol, moves on to the 1.4-litre 16-valve 79bhp petrol (expected to be the most popular choice) and tops out with the 1.6-litre 16-valve 99bhp petrol model. But no European car range would be complete without a diesel version, and the new-generation Fiesta gets a new-generation TDCi derv-drinker. With a modest capacity of 1.4 litres, a modest eight valves and an equally modest 67bhp, this common-rail turbocharged unit at least provides a respectable 118lb ft of torque.