Fail of the Century #220: the 2014 Ford EcoSport

When it comes to ‘not serving up steaming clangers’, Ford hasn’t dropped the ball too often this century (at least compared with, say, Peugeot, who spent a large chunk of the Noughties seemingly unable to pick up the ball in the first place).

Which was why the EcoSport – introduced to Britain in 2014 – came as such an unpleasant surprise. An inoffensive compact crossover based on the Fiesta, there didn’t seem much that could go catastrophically wrong. Much went catastrophically wrong. The driving dynamics... weren’t. The suspension... didn’t. Mechanical refinement... wasn’t.

So what happened? Much contemporary analysis centred on the EcoSport’s Brazilian origins (though the first UK bound cars were actually built in India, it began life a Brazilian built product for the South American market). The inference being, apparently, that European tastes – and British tastes in particular – were vastly more refined than those of the undiscerning South Americans. The Brazilians might have been prepared to settle for a miserable time, but we jolly well weren’t.

FOTC feels this is unfair on the Brazilians. FOTC has seen Brazil. Brazilians have samba football, and caipirinhas, and carnivals, and actual fun. Britain does not. FOTC humbly suggests that Brazilians demonstrate a rather better grasp of ‘having a good time’ than us dour northern Europeans. The EcoSport wasn’t crap because of its Brazilian heritage. It was crap because it was crap.