The Ford Fiesta Facelift gets unveiled on Tuesday (29 November 2016)

The Ford Fiesta, Ford’s perennially best-selling car,  is getting a facelift for 2017, pushing the Fiesta a bit more upmarket to leave room for the new Ka+.

What do you do with a car like the Ford Fiesta – the best-selling car in the UK for at least the last 300 years – when it’s getting a bit long in the tooth? Nothing too radical has to be the right answer; radical is reserved for failing models.

Ford won’t be doing anything that upsets the sales apple cart, so when the facelift for the 2017 Ford Fiesta gets revealed at Ford’s ‘Go Further’ event in Cologne on Tuesday, expect a titivated version of the current generation Fiesta.

That will mean the usual facelift fodder of tweaked grille, new bumpers, new lights and a bit of fiddling with the details, but what it will also mean is a bit of a push upmarket.

A push upmarket is something every car maker claims for their refreshed model, with more technology, more connectivity and more quality materials. But for the Fiesta it’s a bit of a necessity.

That’s because the new Ford Ka+ – Ford’s new Ka that’s not a Fiat 500 in blue collar clothes – is far too close to the current Fiesta for comfort, so some blue sky needs to be inserted.

That could even mean Ford delivering a new Fiesta Ghia Vignale, complete with leather, chrome and anything else perceived as luxurious to keep the downsizers happy they’re still wallowing in sybaritic surroundings, and relegate the Ka+ to a more hair shirt role.

Away from all that, we can also expect a degree of economy and emission improvements, and some performance improvements too.

The 2017 Ford Fiesta – with all its tweaks, nips and tucks – will go on sale in early 2017 after its reveal in Cologne on 29 November.