Ford Fiesta ST Sense and Sportiness?
Guilty as charged. I was the staff member responsible for specifying the Fiesta ST in brilliant white with the blue racing stripes running over the roof and along the door sills. The boy racer in me couldnt help it. Okay, so I received a bit of a fizzer from the boss, who was expecting a Fiesta diesel to be delivered, but one drive on a twisty road in the ST and I think hed have been unable to resist a smile.
To be honest, the stripes werent the only box I ticked. The ST also came supplied with ESP stability control, power folding door mirrors, rain-sensing wipers and automatic headlights, nudging the on-theroad price just the other side of £14,000. This may not strike you as a conspicuous bargain given that youre buying a car with a mere 148bhp but believe me, this ST represents one of the better hot hatch bargains and it takes a protracted spell in the car to work out why. This car is about three things.
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Overlook these two minor irritants and instead, find some deserted twisty roads and set it loose. Its fantastic, bit with a caveat. Some cars work well all the time. The Fiesta ST doesnt.
Drive it slowly and it feels great, the 2.0-litre engine serving up a generous measure of torque. Push a little harder and, rather bizarrely, this car starts to feel clumsy. Its intolerant of ham-fisted driving.
Driven anywhere between five and eight-tenths effort and you might as well not bother. Youll need to get in the mood for this car. I caught myself at one point turning off the motorway and simultaneously switching off the stereo, checking the rear view mirror and shaking the tension out of my shoulders. The steering wheel feels utterly fantastic.
Its ugly but it feels great, the chunky rim feeling like a baseball bats grip. Youll just want to swing this car at a corner.
"find some deserted twisty roads and set it loose. Its fantastic,"
For a sports hatch, the seating position is far from perfect. The very first thing I did when I got into the ST was to attempt to locate the lever that lowers the seat. There isnt one. You really do have to sit this high.
Although this isnt a problem as far as headroom goes, it doesnt feel overly sporting and taller drivers wont be able to see very far up the road in the rear view mirror. I was constantly ducking to see what was following. The rear seat catch requires a good shove to keep latched and the wider part of the rear bench fell forwards a couple of times under hard braking, on one occasion sending unrestrained luggage flying into the passenger compartment. This will require immediate attention as its a potential safety issue.
Other gripes include alloy wheels that are very easy to kerb, both the nearside front and offside rear already wearing some battle scars. Radio reception is also somewhat hit and miss. The rear hatch opens either with a key from the outside or with a button from inside which can prove inconvenient when youre attempting to load it. The gearbox usually feels very slick between the gears but the Fiesta is geared low (probably to provide decent acceleration figures) and cruising at motorway speeds will have you cursing the lack of a sixth gear.
The box doesnt like being hurried into reverse gear either, often rewarding the driver with an embarrassing graunch even with the clutch fully depressed. The cars rear also mysteriously gained a sticker of Dwight Yorkes head whilst parked in Southampton one weekend. For all the minor irritants, there are aspects of the Fiesta ST that are worth applauding. The seats are superbly supportive, theres plenty of stowage space inside the car, the materials quality inside is leagues ahead of earlier Fiesta models and youre not assaulted with chimes the moment your butt hits the drivers seat.
Chimes are a personal bugbear. Manufacturers use them so that they cab score brownie points with Euro-NCAP testers but you know things are getting out of hand when you cant sit in a parked car and listen to the radio without being nagged into wearing your seat belt. The Fiesta is, thankfully, chime free in this regard. A sincere thank you to Ford for bucking this nannying trend.
The 148bhp 2.0-litre engine is a strange choice for this sort of car. Most car makers would opt for a smaller, more highly stressed powerplant, but the big engine/small car formula is rarely a bad idea. There are a couple of drawbacks though.
Because of the large, transversely-mounted engine the turning circle of the ST is enormous and you may have to take a couple of bites at getting into a supermarket bay. The other downside is fuel economy. Over a week of mixed driving, I was rather surprised to average less than 25mpg, not what you expect from a car this compact. As you can probably appreciate, the ST is not a car without its faults.
Nevertheless, the sheer fun involved in driving it hard buys it a whole lot of credit at the bank. Id gladly accept a few of its idiosyncrasies in return for the talents of Fords chassis engineers. Lets just say that the Fiesta ST is rapidly earning its stripes.
FACTS AT A GLANCE
CAR: Ford Fiesta ST
PRICE: £13,795 on the road
INSURANCE GROUP: 13E
CO2 EMISSIONS: 179g/km
PERFORMANCE: 0-60mph 7.9s / Max speed 129mph
FUEL CONSUMPTION: (urban) 27.2mpg / (extra urban) 49.6mpg / (combined) 38.2mpg
STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: Driver's and passenger airbags, ABS
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: length/width/height 3921/1683/1468mm
