Ford tease Verve

This is how the next Ford Fiesta will look. Not exactly, because this great-looking hatch is only a motor show tease, but the basics are right for a new Ford compact contender in 2009.

The Fiesta will be previewed as the Ford Verve at the Frankfurt Motor Show in two weeks and no one is denying the direct line from the show to a showroom in Australia.

Equally, no one at Ford Australia is prepared to confirm the Verve as a Fiesta.

“It's a B-car concept. It's definitely a concept,” Ford Australia spokeswoman Sinead McAlary, says.

She admits the current Fiesta is on the road to a runout and that Ford is working on something special to replace it.

She also hints that the Verve will be tweaked next year into a car that becomes the next Fiesta, without confirming timing.

“Next year may be too soon. Next year we would probably reveal the production version,” she says.

The Verve is as radical as the Iosis X, the last significant Ford concept to make the transition from spotlights to stoplights.

The Iosis was used as the basis for the new mid-sized Mondeo, which comes to Australia next month with the potential to give Broadmeadows a boost with family-car buyers.

It's the same story with the Verve, which takes a new line for Ford baby cars. It has a smooth hatchback line, a gaping mouth and looks different to anything on the road.

The cabin is the same, though it has a similar radical twist as the Honda Civic.

“Bold, even radical,” is how Ford of Europe design chief Martin Smith describes the Verve.

He says the baby car is pitched at “a sophisticated, fashion-ware generation” with everything from a coupe-style body to 18-inch alloy wheels, a giant glass sunroof and a side profile without intrusive B-pillars.

But there is more inside.

“A new generation of buyers raised with mobile electronic devices will feel right at home,” Verve chief interior designer Niko Vidakovic says.