2011 Ford Fiesta sedan

2011 Ford Fiesta sedan

The automotive press and consumers alike have been waiting for the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) numbers on the 2011 Ford Fiesta fuel economy. The estimates had been around 40-mpg on the highway with expectations of city mpg being somewhere in the high 20s. This week the numbers from the EPA came in and they were right in line with Ford’s estimates and the general publics expectations.

2011 Ford Fiesta

2011 Ford Fiesta

The official word from the EPA is that the 2011 Ford Fiesta equipped with the PowerShift six-speed dry dual-clutch transmission will achieve 40-mpg on the highway. That number is spot on with the estimates that we have been talking about for a while now. The city numbers for the same automatic setup also came in close to expectations at a fairly impressive 29-mpg. What is really interesting is that the 5-speed manual transmission sees a decline in mpg by 1 mpg in the city and 3 mpg out on the highway.

That is going to be a hard reality to get used to, especially when some of the last excuses we had to use as a society for driving a manual was the better gas mileage. Now we are just going to have to admit that some of us like moving the lever back and forth—some might even dare call it fun. However, we were also told by a Ford representative at the 2010 Denver Auto Show that they believed the Fiesta would bring back people wanting to drive manuals due to the cars spirited personality with a manual shift transmission. I guess we will have to wait and see, but for now we do know that Ford has managed to produce a sweet little car that uses class leading technology to accelerate ahead of its competition. It even made our “Top 5 Small Cars You Can Buy” list published earlier this week.

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