Only a few short months ago Ford unveiled the updated version of their bestseller – the Fiesta. Now they’ve taken the wraps off the ST version and unsurprisingly, Ford have pulled out all the stops to uphold the great reputation of the Fiesta ST.
The outgoing car wasn’t exactly known for having a large engine capacity, but Ford have gone with the times and downsized nevertheless. It’s now a teeny 1.5L inline three cylinder producing 197bhp and 214lb ft – undeniably impressive figures for its size. The 0-60 dash is anticipated to be 6.7 seconds. That puts it dead level with the Focus ST200. There’s no mention of MPG but Ford is expecting CO2 emissions of around 114g/km. In the UK you can expect to pay £140 a year road tax, a very reasonable sum for a hot hatch.
There’s three driving modes; Normal, Sport and Track. Each mode alters the steering, throttle response, traction control and even engine sound with “Electronic Sound Enhancement”. In Track mode the TC is disabled completely with ESP set to ‘wide slip’ although there is an option to turn that fully off too.
An updated interior is a welcome sight as it was always a disappointment in the current version. A floating touch screen with ‘Sync 3’ replaces the clunky system from before. Thankfully however, not everything is different, the wonderful Recaros have remained.