With a glut of hot hatches arriving in 2013, the Ford Fiesta ST needs to be good. Ford’s legendary chief engineer, Richard Parry-Jones, has what he calls the 50-yard test (note the endearing imperial measure).
It’s the minimum distance he needs to drive a car to determine whether it’s worth its salt. I’m not that good. I drove the new Fiesta ST hot hatch to Wales, to some roads I know, to find out.
You’ll know the Fiesta, of course, it’s been Britain’s best-selling car for nine of the last 22 years and this Mk6 version has been the UK’s bestseller for each of its four full years of sales. And in every one of those years, Ford has promised a souped-up ST version.
Now it’s finally here, but with this year’s launch of rivals such as the Renaultsport Clio Turbo and Peugeot 208 GTi, the ST is going to have to be piping hot – even though officially it’s several degrees cooler.
The ST has always been sold as a mild madras super-mini for those who find Ford’s vindaloo RS versions hard to stomach. So ST performance isn’t quite as scintillating, or its suspension so single-minded, but it also shouldn’t extract sizeable parts of your bank balance or anatomy to insure or drive. The base model ST costs £16,995, almost £2,000 less than its French or Vauxhall rivals.
Your money buys you uprated and 15-mm lower suspension, with a stiffened torsion-beam rear and new steering knuckles for the MacPherson struts. The electrically assisted steering has a new programme with a faster-ratio rack, and all-round disc brakes (a first for Fiesta) are upgraded with larger-diameter rotors and caliper pistons, and a new tandem master cylinder and pads designed to increase the feedback at the pedal.
Whereas the 2005 Fiesta ST had a 2-litre, naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine, the new ST gets the 1.6-litre Ecoboost turbocharged unit, driving the front wheels via a six-speed manual transmission.
This 179-bhp lump trades a few horsepower to the French and the 0-62mph dash is completed in 6.9-sec; top speed is 139-mph. Combined fuel consumption is 47.9-mpg.
There’s not a lot of spare room in the three-door-only ST, although the back seats have head room to spare for a couple of six-footers, even if their knees are crushed against the back of the front seats.
Those heavily bolstered Recaros hinder egress to the back, although once you get behind the wheel the embrace is closer than a great aunt’s at Christmas. It’s a great driving position, too, though more rally car than laid-back sports.
There’s a fair bit of interior in this Ford, all angled and swooped as if it had been injection moulded around the driver. It all works well, with useful storage spaces in the front and a linearity of switch click and spin that speaks of fine execution. Shame it doesn’t quite appear or feel that high quality.
It’s the same with the instruments which, while perfectly clear and simple, simply don’t look like the premier cru in analogue info delivery.
At 276 litres, the boot is a bit smaller than the opposition’s and, while the rear seatbacks fold, they sit on fixed bases, which makes this feature less useful than it sounds. On the other hand, do you really buy a hot hatch for its suitcase-swallowing potential?
The push-button starter is a total conceit and hidden by the steering wheel, but once started the engine settles to a booming idle that sounds as though there’s a hole in the rear silencer. Select first, up with the short-travel clutch and whoa! the ST is off down the road, its nose thrusting and poking into seams and undulations like a tracking dog on the scent of a teenager’s socks.
It’s jiggly rather than harsh, although some of Britain’s roads will have the wheels crashing around like pots and pans in a mad chef’s kitchen. I bounced down the M4 motorway, thumping over surface imperfections and bashing through potholes in the services.
It’s quite noisy and the artificial engine tune piped to the bulkhead is a bit of a drone, but the main racket comes from the 205/40/17in tyres and the wind over the body.
The previous ST was a highly entertaining device, but not a happy bunny on the motorway, where the buzzing engine and busy ride made it exhausting and thirsty. So a sixth ratio and the greater part-throttle efficiency of the turbo motor are welcome for anyone who actually wants to go anywhere in the ST; we got about 36.2-mpg on motorways and A roads.
The engine pulls well from about 1,500-rpm, but has a vibration at about 2,000, which fizzes through the major controls. It doesn’t seem to affect the power delivery though, which is strong and progressive to the 7,000-rpm red line.
Turn off the motorway and you quickly realise what this car was made for. This is a sensational machine, with huge amounts of grip, a progressive chassis and intuitive handling that’s like an extension of your thoughts. It grips, but is adjustable on the throttle and at times seems almost clairvoyant, although that’s just the torque vectoring dragging you into a corner faster than you dare.
It brakes like you drove into a vat of treacle, but with a pedal as sensitive as a Bechstein’s middle C. It just monsters roads and is the kind of car that drives supercar owners crazy wondering why they spent all that money. The grin hasn’t left my face all week.
The steering, pretty good on the standard Fiesta, is brilliantly communicative and as good as it gets in this era of electronically assisted systems. Even so, the engine’s torque will tug the wheel under hard acceleration and you need to be careful when overtaking because the tyres will follow road undulations.
After just 500 yards I knew the ST was simply stellar, right up there with the greatest hot hatchbacks. Where its rivals invite you to be grown up and savour technology and luxury as proxies for pin-sharp responses, the ST says there’s plenty of time to be grown up, but fun is finite so grab it while you can.
