European hatchbacks: first in a series.

The selection of econoboxes in North America in the late 80's and early 90's wasn't a wide one.There were a few domestic models but most were captive imports such as the Ford Festiva and Dodge Colt or models directly from Honda, Toyota and the like. Cities and towns are generally spread over long distances in North America so cars, and trucks for that matter, tended towards the large size for comfort and because we had the room! Such is not the case in Europe. Towns and cities are much closer together, countries smaller and the continent is more densely populated. If you took a twelve hour drive in Canada or the US you wouldn't leave Canada or the US. A twelve hour drive in Europe, for example from Amsterdam to Milan could have you  in a total of six countries; Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Italy! That's part of the reason that the majority of cars in Europe tend to be smaller. Combine that with the high cost of fuel and the result was, and still is, a much larger selection of cars that would fit into the econobox category. 

European econobox and hot hatch

This is the first of four posts coming over the next couple of months that will feature a number of those econoboxes, and their "hot hatch" variants, not available in the North American market. These will be models available from the late 80s until the mid to late 90s manufactured in France, the UK, Italy and Japan!

What if....

... Kia were to reintroduce the Pride for 2020?

Top Gear Philippines recently posted an article on just that subject. After sharing the article to the Ford Festiva community one member decided to take it a step further.


 

From the Top Gear Philippines article

Considering that the Kia Pride, Mazda 121DA and Ford Festiva are essentially the same car with different trim it wasn't too much of a stretch to reimagine the Kia as a 2020 Ford Festiva!

Community support

With the econoboxes of the 80's and 90's getting on in years it's great to see members of the community reaching out to support its members. One example is Ben Rogers and his store,  121 Apparel.

One of many designs in the 121 Apparel store

His initial offerings featured the Festiva, Mazda 121 and Kia Pride. He included other vehicles that were in some way connected to the Festiva/121/Pride trio such as the Mazda 323 family, the Capri XR2 of the time, and Ford Escort GT. The response has been so positive he was encouraged to include quite a number of other marques of the same era. Follow the link above to see his latest offerings!

If you know of anyone supporting their car community in a similar fashion let us know in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you!

What makes our Festiva different?

I had the opportunity to show our Festiva in the 2018 version of the annual Bowness Auto Parts Show & Shine. This show is held not far from our home so a some of those people had seen us driving around. Quite a number of people stopped by to ask questions and find out about the car. Although there has been quite a bit of work done on the car it is hard to tell if you aren't familiar with the Festiva. This post will be a comparison of our car and a stock Festiva. You can read more about the "in-between" on this page

 

Display spot acquired in front of Cadence Coffee

The biggest change is in the engine compartment. 

Westiva 2017

What a great day!!!

Our drive out was in surprisingly heavy traffic on the Trans Canada Highway west of Calgary but once we turned onto Highway 40 it got a lot lighter.

Heavy traffic westbound on the Trans-Canada Highway

We were travelling with Jimmy Hawkins who had driven to Calgary from Macon GA. We were joined by Ryan and family just as we turned onto Highway 40 so the last 30km or so ended up being a three car convoy to the Wedge Pond Day Use Area.

Our "new" econobox page update!

I've just updated the "our new econobox" page... you'll find it here. I look forward to your comments!

Westiva update!

It's been an exciting couple of days for us! The producers of a local radio show, Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio 1, contacted me and that discussion led to a live in studio interview on Wednesday morning!

Radio interview

That interview resulted in a follow up article on cbc.ca later in the day. A writer for a local newspaper heard the segment and gave me a call which resulted in an article in today's edition of the Calgary Metro paper.

Getting even more excited about the day.

Thanks to the Calgary Eyeopener crew and to Brodie Thomas at Metro News for promoting our little event!

Update of the update.... 
 
Here's a blog post on "The Truth About Cars" that resulted from the Metro News article! You never know who's going to find you.

Our faithful Festiva... gone before its time!

Had a bit of a setback in our automotive plans. We were hoping that our red '92 Festiva would make it through the winter so that I could get all the wiring and engine stuff done before swapping the suspension and interior over to our blue '93 project car. Such is not the case. 

The engine of the red car, which has well over 500,000km/300,00miles on it, started making unusual noises. I thought at first that the water pump or alternator were possible culprits but ruled those out by running the engine without the belt in place.

The Mazda engines of this type were prone to failure where the timing gear sprocket is mated to the end of the crankshaft and that's what has happened on mine. In the early '90s Mazda improved their B series engines by enlarging the diameter of the crankshaft where it comes out the front of the engine. Hence the terms "small nose" and "large nose" you may hear when these otherwise sturdy engines are up for discussion.

We decided not to expend any more energy, time or money on our red car so it was summarily parked and is currently being stripped of all its "goodies". The weather has been relatively warm the last few days so I've  taken the opportunity to get as much done outdoors during the day and then working in the garage in the evenings. 

Status as I write this:
- most of the interior removed
- rear axle, struts and brakes removed 
- gas tank removed from the red and installed in the project car ( it was brand new a few months ago)
-  rear axle prepped for install in the project car

The '92 up on stands ready for dismantling.

Rear axle, brakes and struts out. Gas tank is next.

Interior partially stripped.

Rear axle assembly ready to be prepped for the project car.

There's a lot more "stuff" to come off the red car such as the European headlights and grille, custom short shifter, air conditioning to name just a few. 

UPDATE: The 92 has been completely stripped and the shell has gone off to the scrapyard. Most of the parts scavenged from it have either been installed in the project car or will be shortly. Here's a couple of shots of the remains before it was sent off. RIP (rust in pieces) faithful friend...

You can see the project car in the background!

 

Not much left :(

 
I was sad to see it come down to this but as I was removing bits and pieces I discovered even more rust than I expected. The project car is rust free with much less than half the kilometers on it.

Just a little reminder... here's the project car as it was when picked up earlier this year.

I'll be writing up a bit more about the project in the next little while so please come back soon to check things out. If you'd like to know more about this project please leave a question or comment below.