As part of Ford’s publicity drive for the new Fiesta before it launches in the US, a pair of modified Fiestas have been competing in the 2009 Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
Driven by Marcus Gronholm, the 800bhp Fiesta looks quite at home on the twisting mountain route. Sadly Marcus’s time of 11:28.963 wasn’t enough to beat the best time of 10:15.368, set by Nobuhiro Tajima in his 870bhp Suzuki SX4, but it was a good showing for Ford and has helped raised even more attention for the little Fiesta. Marcus’s teammate, Andrea Eriksson, had a less successful race weekend with an accident in practise and problems in the race preventing him from completing the course.
Marcus’s run was filmed by various onboard cameras and the footage has been stitched together into an excellent 9-minute video on Youtube. Called ‘Peak Performance’ it’s in high-quality with great sound, so sit back and enjoy.
If you think you’ve seem something similar to this before then you might be thinking of the legendary Climb Dance video from 1988, where Ari Vatanen broke the Pikes Peak record in a Peugeot 405. Guess what, you can watch that too while you’re here.