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How to sell a Fiesta ST

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9 May 2013

Fiesta ST
The Fiesta ST is a cracking little car. We got to try it on a racetrack and are still trying to figure out how the photographer didn’t get run over in this shot

THOSE who understand these things say that in the recent uprising of small hot hatches, it’s Ford who can feel smug and Renault and Peugeot who must be casting nervous glances in the Fiesta ST’s direction.

It looks the business to start with – there were nine identical red ones lined up in the morning along Cardiff’s trendy dockside – all squat and business-like with 17” alloys that look much bigger on what is, after all, a pretty small car.

The Fiesta ST is a hoot on the track or the road

Climb in, and the Recaros wrap round you to the point where at least one of my fellow test drivers must have found them a bit snug after all those press lunches. But for the svelte they are comfortable and supportive.

Make the most of it because on the move it’s crash bang wallop all the way, every pothole an intimate experience. My co-driver was 36 and we reckoned his was about as old as a bottom should be to travel any distance in the ST.

The back is best kept for small children who will complain regardless of what it’s like.

But comfort isn’t the point. For fun and flingability around the misty coastal road between Cardiff and Ford’s Bridgend engine plant where we were to get The ST Chat, it was just the job.

 

Fiesta ST
Not to be tried at home

Trying it on the track

Chat accomplished, plus a genuinely fascinating trip around Ford’s Bridgend engine plant where they make the 1.6 EcoBoost engine that powers the ST, it was off to the nearby racetrack at Llandow.

The idea was to enjoy ourselves that it so say explore the ST’s dynamic qualities unencumbered by speed cameras.

All the instructors at Llandow had names starting in Ja… – Jade, Jake, Jack etc – which was handy because you could scream JAAAA..!!!!!! at all of them going round the track, not that it made any difference.

The cars dipped under 20mpg on the track. Then again they rarely dipped under 4000rpm. Quite impressive really.

Mine was Jade, and I made the mistake of asking her how she pulled such a sweet job as she threw the ST into the first right-hander.

It’s polite to make eye contact when you answer someone, of course it is, but courtesy has its limits and bearing down on a chicane accelerating through 100mph was surely one of them.

There has to be a reason why Ford fits nasty hard plastic door handles to the ST – one of my few criticisms – and this must be it because try as I might I couldn’t sink my nails in as Jade whipped round another 90 degree bend on three wheels wittering on about how her grandfather used to race so ‘it just came naturally’.

Ford reckons the aim with ST’s is to extend the competent and flatter the incompetent which is presumably how even I, a proper Wendy on a race track, found the Fiesta lacking when accelerating down the straights, though forgiving and exhilarating round the twisty bits.

Fiesta STNot so the Focus ST which pulled away from the Fiesta after any ground lost on the corners.

Will this matter on the roads? Not one jot. The Fiesta ST is a hoot, and my only moans would be the mildly disappointing sound (dare I say that the Focus with a 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine sounds better?) and those nasty door handles that jar with the quality of the rest of the cabin.

Would I get one? You bet, but strictly for fun. It would be a great business car for short trips but I’d want something much more boring for travelling any distance. The Focus ST on the other hand…

Read our full car review of the Fiesta ST here.

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Matt Morton

Matt Morton

Matt Morton is an automotive content writer for Business Car Manager

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