Ah, the humble Ford Aspire. It’s been well documented that I can generally find something redeeming in most vehicles, but some do make the task a bit harder. The Aspire, built by Kia for Ford, replaced the Festiva in Ford’s North American lineup as their entry level car. Priced about 20% below an Escort, they were a moderate success but are rarely seen anymore. Time was generally not kind to them and the owners ever less so, which made this one all the more surprising as it had high-mileage “survivor” stamped all over it until I noticed something fairly alarming. But you’ll have to read on to find out all about that. Do it. Do it. Doooo iiiiiit….
The Aspire in fact gets so little respect that its direct Wikipedia entry only consists of three lines of text that contains a total of two facts, one of which happens to be wrong. It was not a badge applied to the Ford Festiva in the U.S. (it replaced the Festiva model.)
But Wiki did clue me in that there IS currently a new Ford Aspire offered in India (!) as a rebadge of a four door Ford Figo sedan and it actually looks vaguely interesting and is offered in a lot of different versions and trims according to the English-language website. I never would have guessed that the Aspire nameplate would carry on. Anyway, time to get out of that rabbit hole and back to Ford’s past aspirations instead of its present ones.
So, if while still on Wikipedia, you then go to the Ford Festiva entry, you for some reason find one paragraph on the Aspire there, which actually does contain a couple of purported facts but that’s it. So I suppose Curbside will have to carry the torch for this little gleam in Henry’s eye.
The Aspire was in fact sold here from the 1994 to the 1997 model years and offered in both 3-door and 5-door models. Our example hails from the second year of the run in 1995 and is obviously a 3-door model. It is a base version as it doesn’t sport a rear wiper or alloys but I’m sure the oh-so-’90s sport decal package added something to the sticker.
The front end seems to have seen some damage a long time ago as the color doesn’t even remotely match the Teal Clearcoat Metallic paint on the rest of the car. It’s most likely that the front was just donated from a blue Aspire, perhaps from this same junkyard a long time ago. Other colors available (besides the teal) were silver, white, red, iris (a light purple), blue, and green with everything but the white and red being metallics. No black or gray besides the silver!) I do distinctly remember seeing these (can’t un-see it) in that horrific metallic flesh color but that was apparently a different model year.
The Ford logo has been sandblasted clean or perhaps the color just fell off, the same affliction seems to plague Saabs as well as some BMWs. And other Fords too, most mid-to-late 2000’s era F-150s I see seem to have the blue missing as well. At least it still wears its assumed name proudly, the Koreans must use good tape or fasteners. But lets see what’s lurking behind this badge under the hood.
Yes, from little 1.3 liter acorns did eventually mighty 3.8 liter Kia Telluride engines descend. According to the factory brochure this little 4-cylinder 8-valve mill put out 63 horsepower at 5000rpm along with 74 lb-ft of torque at 3000rpm on a good day. Equipped as this one is with a 5-speed manual and in the superleggera bodystyle it was good for an advertised 36mpg city and 42 highway in 1995. The optional automatic sapped an astounding 7-8mpg from those figures so back then it really paid to not pay any more for that. Doing the math based on this car’s odometer reading and using an average mpg figure of 39mpg for a manual and 32 for an automatic indicates that buying the manual version saved its owner the cost of purchasing 1,437 gallons of gasoline over its lifetime (and an additional 144 trips to the gas station based on the tank size).
Acceleration was likely a struggle at sea level and compounded at altitude, but with that mpg rating at least the 10-gallon tank would get you decent range and not break the bank when the time came to refill it. The little sticker on the back left of the firewall quietly declares “Made in Korea”.
The tire size is 175/70-13, which has to be getting harder to find these days and actually is already wider than the 165 section tires that were standard on this car when new. I assumed the GT Champiro VP1 tires fitted to this car were a Chinese budget tire, however it turns out the company is based in Singapore and even has a production facility in South Carolina. The tires on this car date from 2014 so are less aged than those on a lot of other cars in here.
This car also still carries all four of its hubcaps without any sign of zip-ties holding them on, so clearly a well designed fastening system and a durable plastic material.
The brakes had power assist with ABS as an optional extra but the only way to get power steering was as an option on the 5door base model and then only with the automatic. Interestingly the automatic was ONLY available on the base model, if you went for the upper spec SE in either door format you were forced into a stick shift which seems bizarre for an American badged car in 1995.
The rear decklid sports a little spoiler that is perhaps one of the most attractive pieces of the car (along with the flush mounted glass on the rear hatch) and wouldn’t look out of place on the back of a BMW M5 or Audi S4. In this case it likely is good for an extra mpg or two and was fitted to all of these as far as I am aware. Below you can see the smallest diameter tailpipe this side of a VW Beetle peeking out from under the bumper. A rear defroster was also not standard but available as a standalone option, presumably that would depend on which dealer spec’d out the lot models, good luck custom ordering that option.
Opening the hatch reveals two working hatch struts, and a decently shaped luggage space. The contents were a bit of a shambles and I didn’t really want to reach in to rearrange everything for you. Just imagine that masonite board on top of the tire and the rug on top of that. The rear seat folds down, albeit as one piece, no split arrangement at the budget end of the range, you’d have to step up to the SE trim for that or get the convenience package.
Apparently the Aspire was the first in its class to include dual front airbags and was the lowest price car in America to do so but the upholstery doesn’t look particularly stain resistant. It does however look extremely durable. Every 1995 Aspire had the same Opal Gray color as the interior color.
Peeking into the backseat reveals more of the same, durable fabric, lots of stains and the expected sea of plastic (mostly hard but durable I presume). Diagonal stitching on the seats is the one concession to style or fashion or design or whatever but it actually does not look too uncomfortable.
Here’s what faces the driver every morning. It’s hard to imagine it as clean but if it was I suppose it’d be okay. The seats look to have various adjustments and there’s no console between them to rob space. See what I meant above? Just like even a blind squirrel will find an acorn at some time, I too can find something positive to say here.
256,165 miles! I have to say I am very impressed, this is a great achievement for a car that was likely beat like a rented mule every day of its life and given zero respect by the public when it roamed the roads. But that wasn’t the most astounding part that I referenced in the title.
That’s the sticker of the place that presumably did the oil changes every, oh, let’s say 5000 miles. If they do in fact remind one to come back 5000 miles after every change, then that means that according to the odometer this car traveled exactly eight miles since the oil was changed. Or was it really? Could it be that someone forgot to fill the oil or left the drain plug loose? Eight miles seems like a reasonable distance for a car to travel without any oil in it beyond the remnants left after the lube place lets it drain for a couple of minutes. If this is what occurred, it’s a shame, this car was probably someone’s sole means of transport and while not in the best physical condition, seemed to be just fine mechanically.
This car seems to have lived its entire life a mile high here in Denver. Lots of low oxygen, trafficky commutes, mixed with snow and ice part of the year and high heat for another part. At least the humidity levels are pretty low here. Colorado isn’t really easy on cars, and we have plenty of transplants.
Kia and Hyundai (but not Daewoo) for some reason seem to put the exact build date on their cars and this one being built on December 14th of 1994 means I had missed its 25th birthday party by five days when I visited. In fact it celebrated that day with the other condemned inmates here according to the inventory sticker on its flank. But I looked that date up and it turns out that this is a “Wednesday Car”, perhaps that is the reason it lasted so long. Maybe there really is something to that theory…
For some reason I feel something for this car, it seems to have been felled before its time. It’s kind of like a plucky little mouse in a rainstorm rushing around across a road trying to find shelter when a semi-truck comes and squashes it. Hopefully its spirit will continue and somebody will get the longest lasting and hardest working new dishwasher made this year.
Related Reading:
Jim Grey finds and posts Curbside’s first Aspire
Jim Grey finds and posts Curbside’s second Aspire
Xequar also finds one and does a CC Lite on it
Wow that is one awful little buggy. Somehow the wheels look even smaller than 13”. It lead an honorable life and probably Aspired to be more than a glorified golf cart.
My ’88 Ford (Kia) Festiva had 12″ wheels.
I had a Nissan Micra that did as well. I put Civic 13″ rims on and they looked huge!
The interior, although dirty has held up pretty well considering its age. There was an early 90’s Corolla on CC a few weeks ago that had a pretty badly cracked up dash. I don’t think it was bad bad car for what it was, a basic cheap car.
While I’m a reasonably handy person around the house, having done all manner of assorted tasks from hanging drywall to wiring my laundry room to changing heater hoses on the pickup just yesterday, I long ago realized if I am unable or unwilling to do something I should just pay someone to do it for me – it saves a lot of headache and aggravation.
It seems Ford practiced that lesson also by paying Kia. Arguably, they are still doing such with passenger cars – oh wait, they simply gave up.
We have come a long way from the days when we would roll our eyes at GoldStar televisions and Kia cars. I must say that this little Kiord may have been a better car than some of the all-American versions Ford has churned out on many a Monday or Friday. It would be interesting to compare the recall rates for these vs some other Ford models, something I do not have the time to do at the moment.
It is good to see that these had some decent bones. I wonder if they would be viewed more kindly had they not followed the brilliant little Festiva which was by all accounts a great little road car. This one was not, but it seems to have been much more stoutly designed than the stuff that went from Daewoo plants into the Pontiac dealerships.
This car is a mystery – it is too ratty to have belonged to someone’s elderly Uncle Chester, but then it lived too long to serve as a communal car for a bunch of hostel-mates or such.
Definitely a mystery — in a way it reminds me of David Saunders’ Tercel that was used to haul farm animals, but then a vehicle in quasi-farm use probably wouldn’t go to Brakes Plus for an oil change.
Well, it is front wheel drive, so may I suggest “Kord” as it’s nickname?
This critter reminds me of my trusty ‘84 Chevette, which I traded in somewhere north of 130,000 miles. Bought it used and paid extra for an extended warranty. Took it to Grease Monkey so that I could document the maintenance. Oil changed with Valvoline, new filter, front end lube, safety inspection of lights & etc., windows cleaned (both sides of the windshield) and front carpets vacuumed. All for around $20.
My only complaint with their service was that they were too darned efficient. I never had any time to read any of the magazines in the waiting room!
The service sticker’s milage is when the next service was due – not when the previous service took place. So likely the shop had nothing to do with the car’s demise. Rather than do the next service, perhaps the owner decided s/he was done with the car.
Yes it indicates that the next service is due after the car travels another 4,992 miles, thus my theory that the last one, presumably done 8 miles ago, actually did the car in.
That is how I would read it. Come in for your next service at xxxx miles. They do it that way here so people don’t have to do that math (and they can specify the shortest interval). Maybe a regional variation?
Could it be that the oil change/service/workshop input was completed and either highlighted “its time has come, Sir” or was done purely to get the car to the yard rather than pay to have it towed?
No, that’s kind of a quicky lube place where the workers just hopefully change the filter and add the oil and try to upsell you on a new air filter or whatever, never any suggestion that the car is done for, better to sell a new pair of wipers etc.
No inspections here in Colorado besides emission checks in the more populated counties so if it runs, it is free to roam the roads.
And if you want rid of it, there are any number of companies that will tow it away for you as long as you give them the title. If it’s truly dead it’ll get scrapped (most places require the title to do so) and the towing company will get paid something for the scrap value but if it happens to start it’ll may perhaps show up on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for another round…But being a stick shift as well as generally considered undesirable it would not bring much at all.
As someone else suggested if it was traded in somewhere sometimes a dealer will junk it as well, especially if they don’t have the room to display it in favor of something that will sell faster or more profitably or just because the potential profit is not worth the reconditioning it may need.
Theory #1 — Engine is dead. Oil change place screwed up. As written in article.
Theory #2– Car runs fine. Catholic Grandma got an oil change before trading it in because “it was the right thing to do”. She owned it for 25 years and never knew it was a “foriegn” car…all these years she thought it was an All-American Ford. She also had no clue it was just going straight to the junkyard.
Theory #3 — Grandma drove it for 23 years before retirinf, then passed it down to her high school age Granddaughter who made a mess out of the interior. “Brakes Plus” place did typical scumbag maneuver, tried to sell the Granddaughter $1,200 worth of unnecessary or barely-necessary work, and she just decided to trade it in.
Under theory #2 and #3, the car runs fine, but even the auction clearinghouses don’t want a 25 year old, 260,000 mile Ford Aspire, so the car just got thrown away by the dealership manager even though it runs as well as it has for the past 100,000 miles.
I would never have guessed that one of these cars could make it to 150,000 much less 250,000.
The factory must have painted 75-85% of these that blue/teal color, when you see one nowadays it is always that color. And in my experience, 75% of the survivors have an automatic transmission.
BTW, a Craigslist in my area has a Festiva for sale this week.
Chrysler called it “quartz”, “light quartz”, or “medium quartz”, depending on year and model. Different but equally delusional promospeak for industrial-floor grey!
I’m surprised that Ford still uses the Aspire name — for me it was a rather unfortunate name, suggesting that the owner aspires to drive a real car.
These were not my favorite cars. I was in the market for affordable transportation back in the mid 1990s, but made the choice to buy used cars rather than a new Aspire, or equivalent. But in retrospect, it’s an interesting artifact, so I’m glad it’s had its day in the sun here. Especially with those swoopy ’90s-ish graphics!
It’s got other problems as a name, too: too easy to mock (“Expire”).
We too had a pestilence of these in those years, though Ford Oz cheerily christened it Festiva – presumably in a vain search for badge recognition – after its Mazda 121 clone-namesake and immediate predecessor which it in no way resembled.
I had a 3 y.o. one for a week in the late ’90’s, and was quite looking forward to the crisp efficiencies of a modern for the period when my Old and Crippled Whatever Mobile was getting cosmetic adjustments. And a word from the defence: it wasn’t a bad looker in the time, especially as this 3-door.
However, in a damning word from the prosecution, it had no other virtues of any sort. It had about 50k miles, but smoked and graunched and tried to invert itself if the steering wheel was used. It had excellent gearing, if one lived in on an enormous billiard table, which, at the time, I did not, and so first gear was all it ever needed when it could manage it. Put another way, I thought the gears unreasonably tall, especially for an engine overwhelmed by the weight of one occupant – an unavoidable necessity, usually.
Now, maybe mine was built with much begrudging on a Saturday during Korean New Year, but I don’t think so, as they are all long departed and hopefully forming a fridge or bridge near you today.
So did you pull out the dipstick to test your theory?
Short of that I would suggest that it’s the law of random numbers at work here. As in: with those miles on it, something was going to go sooner rather than later. Could have been a cam belt/chain or any number of wear-impacted parts in the engine or transmission, or? And the fact that it happened 8 miles after the last oil change is just a random coincidence. Or not. 🙂
People love to hate on these, but except for its heavier body which made it less lithe, this is essentially a Festiva. Meaning a Mazda 121. Meaning…tough little car.
Inconclusive as the yard drains the oil anyway….😀
They drain the oil before they set them in the yard. However the smell from the oil cap would tell a lot.
The other possibility is that the person ran it real low on oil and once the light went from flickering on to just on they drove it to get the oil changed. However by then it was too late, full clean oil didn’t stop the rod from knocking and it let loose.
Of course Jim could be right sometimes drain plugs or filters don’t get properly tightened.
Many years ago when I worked at a gas station a guy came in one sat morning in a very new Tercel with the oil light on. Turns out he had just had the oil changed at a quick oil change place the day before and maybe 5 miles ago. It was obvious it had leaked from the filter and when I removed it I found no gasket. Furthermore it had obviously leaked on start up and they had used a filter wrench in an attempt to stop it from leaking. Luckily I did have a filter in stock, filled it up and sent him on his way with the old filter and my findings on the work order. He did say it just came on about a block from the station, but I can’t imagine it didn’t take some life out of the engine.
Little Korean built Mazda, I forget what they are called here other than 121 by Mazda as I havent seen one for a while, probably I’ll see one today that seems to be how things work round here.
Kia Pride was the home market name for the Festiva / 121 and I think was also applied to the generation as the featured car.
A ten year old would have enough strength to turn the engine by grabbing the belt, something I couldn’t have resisted doing…..
Paul beat me to it – as he often does!
A five speed manual Festiva LX was a quick and fun little box to drive. It got great gas mileage and easily kept up with traffic. But the US didn’t want that in 1988.
Instead, the US market wanted an automatic transmission. So, Ford/Kia complied and started selling gutless Festivas until it was time for a redesign. Then during the redesign into the Aspire, Kia added larger tires, going from 12 to 13s, dual airbags, air conditioning, more sound insulation and that performance sucking automatic transmission. All on the same little car.
That made the Aspire gain hundreds of pounds of weight when it was originally designed to be 1700 pounds. Now the Aspire weighed north of 2100 pounds. So, these cars were unable to pull their own weight, especially with an automatic transmission.
The new body style didn’t help. The Festiva was purposeful and sharp, and the Aspire wasn’t. The design studios wanted these little cars to look modern but instead made them look forgettable. The car looked like it was designed on a budget – because they were.
As to dependability, they were dependable. The problem was their utter lack of performance and dull driving experiences.
Not to nitpick, but Aspire was a badge applied to the Festiva in the US, in the sense it was a rebadged Festiva. Most other markets where this was sold (such as Japan, Australia, etc.) got it as the 2nd gen Ford Festiva.
Now that is a smart speedometer, it only goes up to 105 since speedometers that go up way past what the car can do are just silly.
I couldn’t drive a car for a quarter million miles without cruise control. Not having cruise control would seriously annoy me and probably hurt my hip at some point.
Thanks for sharing photos of a car that’s quickly becoming extinct on the roads if it isn’t already.
I remember a C/D review of this thing when it came out and they were very unimpressed. I think it stickered at something like $9400 which was right around the price of a much nicer Neon, with a lot more horsepower, room, four doors, more equipment like power steering and power brakes standard, and was a much more substantial car. Although Hyundais were still pretty wretched and Hondas and even a base Tercel would have been substantially more expensive than this car, A Cavalier would have probably gone out the door without much dickering for about the same price, or a Neon, Mazda Escort, Saturn, or leftover Tempaz, was about the same price, or a Mazda Escort was about the same Price after discounting. There weren’t discounts on these cars. I think Car and Driver had said that the primary market for these cars would be for people who wanted to tow one of these behind a motorhome? It’s hard to imagine who WANTED one of these things compared with the competition with its son of Chevette styling and horribly cheap feel. I’d pick almost ANYTHING over this car.
Why was the Festiva reliable, this car somewhat reliable, but the first Kia Sephias such utter garbage?
Very frugal people and people with bad credit bought these new. The extreme opposites of the car buying spectrum.
Type #1–Six figure income—Goes into Ford dealer on 12/31/1995, gets a new ’95 Aspire for $6,995…less than $8K paid in cash out the door for a new car with a warranty, and proceeds to drive it for the next 25 years. Probably the owner of this car.
Type #2–Has credit score of 550. Dealer: I can get you into this brand new Aspire for only $299 a month for 60 months.
A friend of mine’s ex-wife got taken by a Ford salesman on a Festiva. She paid 14k for it!! 🙂
Yeah, not great. Take an upright square body, round it out so it’s aero, but less space efficient, No more sliding rear seat, add ABS and air bags (weight), leave Ford with interior detail (you wish it was an Escort now), and voila! If we in the US got the DOHC 1.5 I wouldn’t be as harsh. That didn’t happen. Retrograde in a major way to compensate for a perceived lack of style. Pity for Ford. Kia clearly walked away the Victor here…
These were sold as the Festiva in Australia, and colloquially known as the “Festicle”. There are lots of them still soldiering on, providing basic transport after a quarter of a century.
It might have had a timing belt pop on the way home
Or else the oil change place wrote the miles that the car should have on it before the next oil change and this this car is over the next oil change miles by 8 miles
A lot of places around my way will list the miles the car should have on the odometer before the next oil change instead of the mileage that the car had on it for this oil change
Yes that’s precisely what this one has. The odometer is at 256,165, the sticker reminds you to come back at 261,159, i.e. in a further 4992 miles from the time of death.
And yes it could have been any number of maladies. It may even have just run out of gas on the way home from the oil change or something and someone said that’s the final straw…
My aunt Stacy had one of these in that same color albeit a 5 door. I don’t know what year it was but she bought it used around 1998. It replaced an 80’s Prelude which even though I was only 13 years old and the Prelude was a decade older, had faded paint and a wonky front bumper, the Aspire seemed like a downgrade.
I remember my grandfather asking her when she’d be picking up the rest of her car and he and I both laughed at how small the tail pipe was. I know it was looking pretty tired 3-4 years later when she got rid of it.
Growing up in the 90’s, us kids always called it the Asspire, LOL.
This was one of the car models used in the street scene in the Seinfeld episode “The Frogger”. Seen from above, George tries to navigate 3 lanes of traffic in between colorful Aspires like Frogger does in the video game.