All-new Ford Ka: First pics!

Pointing toward the shared and now instantly recognizable design theme that befits the new Ford Fiesta, Focus, C-Max, Mondeo, S-Max, Kuga and Galaxy models, the all-new Ford Ka supermini will be strutting its stuff in good company when launched in November 2008, priced around £8K.

As we all know, a lot can happen in 12 years.

Men can grow impressive beards and women can churn out a nuclear family. Or vice versa if the former is employed by a travelling circus, the later a gender re-aligned advert for men being in touch with their feminine side.

And a car manufacturer can reinvent its most popular models more times than Madonna. Unless that car manufacturer is Ford, and the model under the microscope is the Ford Ka.

Officially to be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in October, the all-new Ka will be launched the following month, and could well see history repeat itself in terms of sales.

At last count, 1.4 million Ka’s had shifted, almost half of which ended up familiarizing themselves with still-boxed Black & Decker power tools and moth-eaten darts boards in British garages.

Ford’s kinetic design language is shouting the odds as usual, yet reads off more or less the same script as the original Ka. A Car that was at the cutting edge of bubble gum-inspired city car shapes in 1996, and could definitely walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

It appears as compact as ever, succeeds in keeping face in contemporary supermini company, is said to be dynamically ‘up for it’, and joy upon joy, oozes a personality supposedly as ‘fun’ as the forced atmosphere on ITV’s Pat Sharp’s Fun House, circa about 12 years ago.

And that’s all down to the new generation Ka threatening to bring the sensitivities of youth and cheek to the city car market. We can only hope it doesn’t therefore arrive on the street scene with a knife draw replacing a glove box and a folding fabric hood that springs out of nowhere from the boot and disguises its CCTV-identifiable features.

All-new Ford Ka borrows from Fiat 500

As well as sharing the Fiat 500’s undercrackers, expect the all-new Ford Ka to sport Fiat engines in the form of 69bhp 1.2-litre petrol and potentially the 99bhp 1.4-litre from the Cinquecento, and doing the under bonnet honours. And it has been mooted that Fiat’s sauce-sipping 1.3-litre Multijet diesel – the first time an oil-burner has ever been Ka-bound - could wind up in the new Ka too. See what we did there? Ka too?

Fiat and Ford are also thought to be in cahoots over an extremely fuel-efficient 900cc, 2-cylinder turbo motor that would offer class-beating, sub-100g/km CO2 emissions and 60-plus mpg fuel economy.

"We are very excited about the launch of the new Ka", said Roelant de Waard, Chairman and Managing Director, Ford of Britain. "The original has been a huge hit in the UK with a sales record of over 480,000 – 80 per cent of which have been to retail customers, and many of those first-time buyers. I'm confident that the latest design will prove just as big a hit", he added.

Incidentally, this isn’t actually the first time we’ve clapped eyes on the all-new Ford Ka. If you recall – and you have 20/20 vision and a set of blinkers attached to your head – it popped up (for 0.0000001 second) in a video stream for the new James Bond flick – Quantum of Solace.

Prices are as difficult to accurately pin down as a tail on a donkey when blindfolded, although we reckon the £7,500 - £8K mark is as near as damnit.