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US Ford Fiesta Gets Powershift Dual-Clutch Gearbox

Ford is getting more an more serious with selling small cars in America, so the Los Angeles Auto show brought a lot of surprises. Even if the customized Fiestas were nice, the most interesting thing became Ford’s Powershift dual-clutch gearbox which will find its way into the United States version of the Fiesta.

The dual-clutch gearbox comes as an alternative to the five-speed manual gearbox which comes with the 1.6-liter Ti-VCT four-cylinder petrol engine (88kW/152Nm).

“Powershift is a really new thing,” Global marketing group vice-president Jim Farley told goauto.com. “We have had it in Europe but this is the first time we are seeing it here. It’s built with Getrag, and it’s really exciting … it is really efficient like a manual.

“But I won’t get into any details about how we are going to roll it out – but we have a very aggressive plan on how we are going to implement Powershift. Our vision is to be the fuel economy leader – and not just here in the US but also around the world with Fiesta and Focus. And to do that in automatic markets you have to have something like the Powershift transmission to be the leader. So we will progressively implement that technology.”

The US spec Fiesta has been changed a (very) little, compared with the European version. “We changed the dome lamp in this car – it’s adjustable – and now we have one in the rear; also we have a different seat adjuster – in Europe the adjuster is a round knob and in the US customers prefer a lever,” said Ford of the Americas president Mark Fields.
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