Fiesta ST

[Brown Bottle]

Mrs BB's Honda Civic was getting close to 100,000 miles and after 30,000 miles of nothing but routine services, after she bought it from her company, we decided to trade it in before any costly bills (we got 300 less than what she paid for it on trade in). I have a family sized car for work (Passat Estate) and Mrs BB  wanted something fast and a bit smaller than her Civic and preferably about 12 months old.

My only input, other than agreeing on price, was that it shouldn't be French or a Fiat. Her first choice was Golf GTi but we quickly ruled that out as too expensive. Second choice was a Fiesta ST. After looking on line we found a local dealer and went for a test drive, she fell in love with it straight away. We eventually got one from another dealer after using car Wow, brand new at 0.9% APR it wasn't worth going second hand. 

I'm not going to write a long review because I've hardly been in the the thing. Main points are:

The VERY Bad

• Despite being Recaro they front seats are the most uncomfortable I've ever sat in.
  

The Bad

• Console looks like it's off the Star Ship Enterprise but reduced down to 1/72 scale, fiddly barely gets near it.
  
• We are both in our 40's, everyone under 25 wants to race us. 
  

The Good

• Front leg room is very good.
  
• Even rear leg room is good for adults on short/medium journeys.
  
• Boot space is very good for the size of the car.
  
• When you can finally figure it out the sound system is nice, better than my Passat.
  

The VERY Good

• 1.6 Turbo engine is an absolute peach, very sedate in traffic (if you want it to be) but when you put your foot down it's so responsive with a lovely power delivery.
  

The VERY VERY Good

• It goes round corners like it's on rails. I don't have the bottle to push it any harder than I have but it just laps up everything you throw at it. I'd love to take it on the North Yorkshire Moors.
  

I couldn't use it as my daily car, the seats would drive me crackers but I love any excuse to take it out at weekends. It's the first car for a long long time that's made me smile when I'm driving. 

Cheers BB

 

[radamel]

Loved to read this.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[TigerTiger]

Wifey had a two litre ST up until Christmas, lasted 11 years, clutch, steering rack and exhaust, all reasonable, sub 8 seconds to 60, pulled like a train and and as you pointed out cornered on rails, the chassis is good enough for yet more power, the engine could be tuned quite a bit from standard, but that would have been too much for wifey.

We did consider spending serious money on rebuilding it, mainly body work, it showed signs of rust on the wheel arches, and the interior was very dated, in the end decided that since wifey Is now in her late sixty's something a little more sedate was needed, so she now has a Panda 4x4 twin air and it's an amusing little beast that loves climbing hills, and I won't feel put out when I dump my Subaru and we go down to the one car.

We gave the ST to a neighbours son who is training in automotive engineering, he now smiles a lot.

Oh, it was orange and the boy racers always wanted to take her on, and the local constabulary used to stop her on the way home from work quite regularly until they had all sussed she was the local librarian.

 

[Brown Bottle]

Hi George, current model is 168BHP i believe, you can buy a tuned model at 200 BHP, it's tuned by an outside company but fully warranted by Ford. Ford are shortly bringing out an  official ST200 model. Mrs BB is already talking about getting one :doh: .

Cheers BB

 

[TigerTiger]

Good for her BB,  you can never have too much time overtaking a man in a hat as my French pal used to say to me.

 

[d_a_n1979]

Lovely motor; one we'd considered to replace the wifes aging Focus

But alas, they're too small for me (or I'm too big for them) and they don't have the boot space we'd like to keep!

Looked at the Focus ST, but bloody horrible inside IMO, plastic-central!

Still looking... 

 

[Jezzer]

Great review BB.  I really like the look of the Fiesta ST (at least from the outside).  I'm sure it's a hoot to drive!  Clearly they have a bit of a Boy Racer rep as I see a few tearing about the place from time to time.  Lovely car (despite the rep!).

 

[sunbeamgls]

We have a Zetec S - next one down with many of the same performance oriented bits -  which is also a great car, even though its somewhat down on ST power at 125bhp (from a 1.0 litre triple!).

Agree with pretty much all of your thoughts - we don't have the Recaros and the seats are excellent.

I would add that the steering is the one weak point on handling - its very accurate but also rather dead - there's no feedback like we used to get on the 306 XSI (probably the best handling FWD car I've experienced).  I would also add that the Fiesta is a very sophisticated car - it feels well engineered and built and is very quiet on motorways.  Ours is economical too, but that probably doesn't apply to the ST.

 

[Brown Bottle]

Mrs BB is getting 33mpg, she does put her foot down but the car is used mainly on her commute on duel carriageways. I hadn't noticed the steering feel, although everything I have driven over the last 10 years has had dead steering.

Cheers BB