As I mention from time to time, styling a small car is not an easy task. There isn't much size for overall shape-sculpting, for one thing. Nor is there room for the kind of ornamentation that can work well on a larger car. As a result, for many years small cars tended to feature bland, simple styling. Matters have changed in recent years thanks to the fashion of adding a lot of metal sculpting in the form of creases, bulges, folds and such on body panels. This can become overpowering on almost any size car.
As for New Edge styling, the concept was to apply overlapping arcs (think Venn diagrams) to body panel or element breaks; this will be evident in the Ka images below. New Edge was one of those theories that didn't work well in the real world of the automobile marketplace. One problem was that it limited the kinds of shapes those parts of a car could assume. That is, stylists were more highly constrained than normal when working on New Edge designs. Perhaps more seriously, New Edge features were not especially attractive. The eventual result was abandonment of New Edge on Fords, perhaps expedited by Telnack's 1997 retirement and replacement by J Mays, who had his own theories of car styling.
New Edge elements include the arc of the top of the grille opening that extends into the headlight housing via the division between the headlamp zone and the amber turn indicator area. The curved fender peak blends with the light housing, this arc crossing the grille opening arc just mentioned. Thus we see overlapping arcs.
This seems to be from a later model year, where the impact zone cladding is de-emphasized because here its texture and color blend with the rest of the body. New Edge is being dialed back.
More New Edge overlapping with respect to the hatch opening, the tail lights and the dark rear impact cover panel.
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