The Ford Ass Fire (1994-1996 Ford Aspire)

The mid to late 1990's were not a pretty time for Ford, or the rest of the automotive world. Almost everything on the roads looked a failed Wacky Races extra but boring. But, as with any mess, there are a few cars that rise above the rest. These are the cars that are the worst of the bog of pure shit from that time period. One of those cars is the 1996 Ford Aspire, or more accurately, the Ford "Ass Fire." It is one of the most critically flawed vehicles on   this blog . I would say "buckle up" or "strap in" at this point, but honestly, I wouldn't even recommend getting in the damn thing to start with.  Anyway, brace yourselves for the utter embarrassment to the automotive world that is the 1996 Ford Aspire.

Let's start with how much the average person, or even car enthusiast knows about this car. Well, the world doesn't seem to, or at least doesn't want to, know about the car. What I am About to show you ois the entire Wikipedia article on the vehicle. Okay, here it goes. "The Ford Aspire nameplate has been used by the American automobile manufacturer Ford for the following cars, in the following markets: 

• Ford Festiva, in North America from 1993 to 1997
• Ford Figo, a rebadged third generation Ford Ka, in India since 2015"

There you go. That is all that Wikipedia has on the vehicle. As the article, if you can call it that, so kindly points out, the name was also used on the Ford Festiva in North America. However, towards the end of that tenure, Ford made the shitbox into it's  own vehicle. The vehicle was based largely off the ungainly Ford Festiva Sx, the 1996 Aspire picked up from where that failure had left off. It sported many of the same panelings and an almost identical shape. However, where as the Ford Festiva SX was laughably stupid and killed off quite quickly, this butt-ugly son of a bitch refused to die and became an unfortunate scar on the company's, at that time already failing, reputation. Another thing that is difficult to tell is what warped mind was responsible for the pure disaster that was the design of the vehicle. This was largely due to the fact that the Aspire wasn't even originally buit by Ford at all, it was built by Kia for the Korean market. Did the motoring world care? Fuck no! They just new the damn this was toxic as hell and knew to stay the hell away from one. There were Evan several joke calls to local authorities with one basic complaint... "someone has put a horrible statue where my parking space is supposed to be."

Anyway, now let's talk stats. An important thing to note here is that the car was available in both automatic drive and manual. Let's start by talking feul consumption. Keep in mind that, by this point, the 1995 first generation Toyota Prius Hybrid was already in place. With that out of the way, here are the numbers.

 Automatic (City): 8.0 mpg

Automatic (Highway): 6.3 mpg

Manual (city): 6.9 mpg

Manual (highway): 5.2 mpg

Those numbers are some of the worst-in-class for this class of vehicle.  And while we are on the subject of worst-in-class things, the 3-Dr only had one engine... a tiny little shit-can of an 8-valve 1.3L L4 SOHC. That's right, the tragic little Honda engine went in a Ford made by Kia. And the cheap low grade part's didn't stop there as the car boasted a sluggish and sticky 3-speed automatic gearbox that made the gearbox in the Mustang II look like the work of gods. Many gearbox failures were reported in the 1996  version of the car, as well as many reports of the gear stick either getting stuck, normally whilst on the highway, or snapping clean off. Then we come to the car's top speed. Well, there isn't really much of one as this hunk of junk could only reach 180KMPH (111 mph). A slightly better version was made available to make up for this. This version added 2 more horsepower and a 5-speed gearbox.
Everything about this car is tragic, enough said.