Blast from the past: End of the road for the Ford Fiesta

The early models were no head-turners and lacking in panache – dumpy little hatchbacks with a pointy nose.

From Cookstown to Craigavon, you could barely venture into a Northern Irish car park without spotting one of the scrappy little workhorses, used generally for shopping or commuting.

Some personalised their Fiesta with accessories, such as a pair of pink furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror, or a CB Radio aerial stuck to the roof. A favourite was the personalised windscreen sun strips –representing a public proclamation of love and union between a couple…’Tony and Carol’.

The Ford Fiesta will always be synonymous with the ‘star prizes’ on ITV’s hit game show, Bullseye, an unsophisticated mix of darts and rudimentary questions. We loved seeing the contestants’ crestfallen expressions when host Jim Bowen declared ‘this is what you would have won… a Ford Fiesta!’. But instead, the downcast dart players went home with a canteen of cutlery.