Like many other trades, car designers have some rather arcane jargon at their disposal. Floplines, overhangs, tumblehome, and aspect ratios - it's pretty impenetrable to the layman. So, when a designer friend of mine looked at the latest three-door Fiesta and mentioned the "astonishingly sexy DLOs" I just nodded sagely. I later discovered he was right.

After donning a black Polo neck and consulting the Impenetrable and Pretentious Guide To DesignerSpeak, I deduced that DLOs are DayLight Openings. Windows to you and me. One suspects George Formby would never have achieved quite such success with 'When I'm Cleaning DayLight Openings' but that's by the by. With the three-door body shape, Ford have managed to give the somewhat staid Fiesta shape a little more pizzazz. And tight pricing starting from £8,595 should help too.

It's surprising just how much the deletion of a pair of doors can do for the looks of a car - and here's a case in point. The three-door Fiesta's roofline abandons the squared-off look of the five-door in favour of a more elegantly tapered line. This meets a more sharply raked tailgate with more of a kink than the abrupt angle of its more family-friendly sibling. To emphasise this wedge effect, the hipline - the line of the bottom of the side windows - is angled upwards more aggressively.

The facelift that the current car sports has done much the Fiesta's appearance. The grille is now of a diamond mesh design, the headlamps are pointier and the side mouldings grow thicker as they progress rearwards. The rear lights have been reshaped as have the bumpers and the overall effect is a slight move away from the Fiesta's inherent chunkiness in a sleeker, more dynamic direction.

"Britain loved the old Fiesta and this one is a breed apart."

A great deal of thought has been put into packaging of this car, an area that was a real weak point of the previous generation model. Emerging from the rear of an old Fiesta after any distance had you empathising with Alec Guinness when he came staggering from the 'oven' in Bridge On The River Kwai. The latest car is a world apart. Yes, headroom is 8mm less than in the five-door variant, but the rear is no longer cramped or claustrophobic, rakish rear notwithstanding. Rear passengers also benefit from class leading knee clearance and because there are no rear doors, the shoulder room of 1,355mm is also top of the shop for a three-door supermini. There are stowage bins to the side of the rear seat and entry and exit from the rear is easy due to the long doors. As a result it's a bit of a stretch for the seatbelts when seated up front.

Those expecting something that breathes fire will go for the ST150 version, but the rest of us will have to make do instead with something that rates about room temperature on the hot hatch scale. Six engines are available, a 70bhp 1.25-litre, a 1.4-litre 16v Duratec petrol that develops 80bhp, a 99bhp 1.6-litre 16v, the 2.0-litre 150bhp unit in the ST, a 68bhp 1.4-litre TDCi diesel or a larger 1.6-litre TDCi. The 1.4-litre TDCi unit is a result of a co-operative venture between Ford, Peugeot and Citroen to jointly develop diesel technology and it's a cracker. Although it's not hugely rapid, it'll cover 650 miles on one tank of fuel, eking an average of 65.7mpg from each gallon.

The 1.4-litre petrol engine features the option of a Durashift EST gearbox, offering the control of a manual gearbox with the convenience of an automatic. Unlike the batch of usually underwhelming Tiptronic-style automatic transmissions which you can knock up and down using some form of controller, the Durashift EST is a proper sequential manual unit that fits with the three-door Fiesta's sportier image very well. Without the wasteful torque converter of an automatic gearbox, the EST 'box is a good deal more economical and, with such systems now becoming more popular and economical to manufacture, costs a good deal less.

Early examples of these sequential manual gearboxes weren't brilliant. Ferrari's F1 system ate clutches in stop/go traffic, BMW's first stab at the SMG gearbox was only slightly smoother than a badger's behind and Alfa's Mk 1 Selespeed gearboxes were also pretty unappetising. Things have moved on a good way since then and EST includes a number of refinements that offer the best of both worlds. Take your foot off the brake and it will creep forward in gear like an auto, thus making stop and start driving so much smoother, yet when you're in the mood to mambo, the gearbox will perform racing-like blips of the throttle at each downchange.

The Fiesta is unsurprisingly well suited to this sort of treatment. Certainly it's a far more competent handler than its impressive predecessor - and that should be praise enough for most. As a result, its handling is elevated to a position above and beyond any existing supermini, whilst its ride and refinement are comparable with the class best - cars like the Volkswagen Polo and Skoda Fabia. The steering was obviously engineered by somebody who understands the needs of keen drivers, being nicely weighted and rich in feedback without becoming a wearing distraction. The Fiesta shrugs off mid-corner bumps well and has a genuine big car feel. If there's one complaint however, it's that the Fiesta may almost be too clever for its own good, for it's true that some of the puppy dog enthusiasm of the old car's handling has been smoothed out. In making the car more competent, a little of the fun factor has been excised.

Equipment levels are reasonable, spread across Studio, Style, Style Climate, Zetec Climate, Ghia, Zetec S and ST trim levels. Like its 5-door sibling, this variant isn't a wildly adventurous piece of design but it all works remarkably well. Add up all the unique selling points and you'd think that this Fiesta can't possibly fail. Especially with DLOs like that.

TOP 5 FIESTA DEALS

The results below show the top FIESTA deals on buyacar

	Ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi Zetec S 3dr Hatchback
	ETR	Mthly £161	Saving £3,153	Price £9,892
	Ford Fiesta 1.6 Zetec S 3dr Hatchback
	ETR	Mthly £148	Saving £2,859	Price £9,136
	Ford Fiesta 1.25 Studio 3dr Hatchback
	ETR	Mthly £111	Saving £2,068	Price £6,777
	Ford Fiesta 2.0 ST 3dr Hatchback
	ETR	Mthly £204	Saving £2,130	Price £11,865
	Ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi Zetec 3dr [Climate] Hatchback
	ETR	Mthly £154	Saving £2,963	Price £9,332

typical 12.36% APR

PCP finance quote over 48 months,  10,000 miles pa,  deposit of £1000