Remember when hot hatchbacks felt like a break from the rigorous commercial norm of the car business? Oddballs and extroverts like the Alfa Romeo 147 GTA, the unique-to-South Africa Opel Kadett GSI 16V S aka Superbossand Renault Clio V6. They certainly don’t make ’em like that anymore.
The modern descendants of these cars might still be fun to drive but, at least as far as the industry is concerned, they’re now not only serious cars but also serious money-making machines. Being seen as key "brand-builders" by the companies producing them, hot superminis (small compact hatchbacks) are now twice as popular in Europe as they were just 5years ago. As a result, both the specification of this new, 3rd-generation Ford Fiesta ST and the evident time and effort lavished on it by in-house tuning department Ford Performance echo that loud and clear.
The new ST has the fastest steering rack and stiffest torsion beam yet to be fitted to a performance Ford.
Coming along just a year after the European launch of the 7th-generation Fiesta hatchback on which it’s based (the standard range of derivatives recently went on sale in South Africa), the new ST has a list of hardware upgrades and performance features more lengthy and impressive, in many ways, than that of the car with which Ford's performance car division, known as TeamRS, built its modern reputation: the 2002 Focus RS, which was sadly never available in the South African market.
That it’s the first fast Fiesta to be available with a helical limited-slip differential for its driven front axle will be the headline-grabbing titbit plucked by many from its specification sheet (it’s optional, and supplied by Quaife). But this is actually a car with so much new and interesting technical content that I’ll do well to cover all of it.
The car’s departure point is a Fiesta chassis braced in key areas on the underside of the body-in-white, which is itself 14% more rigid than that of the standard car. The new ST also has the fastest steering rack and the stiffest torsion beam yet to be fitted to a performance Ford. It has particularly interesting suspension, too, which is well worth examining before we move on.
Tenneco has supplied frequency selective dampers that aren't adaptive in the traditional sense, but operate in a similar way.
Frequency selective dampers from Tenneco feature front and rear. They are double-valved in order to better handle both high –and low-frequency inputs than a conventional passive damper could but they’re not "adaptive" as such – just clever. Moreover, Ford fits asymmetrical, directionally wound springs onto the car’s rear axle, which are in effect bent into their fittings in order to apply a stabilising lateral force onto the rear wheels as well as performing the usual load-bearing job.
The springs address a key problem that hot hatchbacks with twist-beam rear suspension have always had: that, in order to effectively locate the rear axle and deliver top-level handling precision, you have to fit very rigid suspension mounting bushes which have a detrimental effect on the ride. These "torque vectoring" springs, says Ford, do as good a job as a Watt’s linkage setup in solving that problem and permit the fitment of much softer bushes.
The ST's interior racier details are subtle, including contrast stitching and almost prerequisite carbon fibre-look insets.
The Fiesta ST has a dedicated front hub design of the sort becoming common among cars of its ilk. It has allowed Ford to lower the car’s ride height without lowering its front suspension roll centre too much, and it keeps control of front kingpin angle and wheel offset as necessary in order to avoid too much torque steer and bump steer. The spring rate is slightly higher than that of the outgoing car but, as the engineers behind the car’s chassis development will tell you, the new damping and bushing in combination contribute to a more mature, rounded feel to the new car’s ride – and all without taking the all-important playful handling balance and cutting-edge response away from the handling.
Those engineers will also tell you that while they loved the last Fiesta ST (as did many of us), it certainly had an uncompromising ride that they simply couldn’t justify transferring directly onto this new version. But before you doubt them, these are the same engineers who, halfway through the development programme, sent the Pilot Sport 4S tyres originally intended for the car back to Michelin and insisted only grippier Pilot Super Sports would do.
Is the Fiesta ST the first hot hatch to feature cylinder-deactivation technology? Perhaps, but it is no less potent thanits predecessor.
The ST’s new engine is one about which, I dare say, you may already have read: an all-aluminium, 3-cylinder, 1.5-litre turbocharged motor, which gives the car identical peak power and torque figures to those of the outgoing ST’s 1.6-litre 4-pot (147 kW and 290 Nm), but which can also deactivate its middle cylinder and run on 66% of its normal swept volume in conditions of light load. That’s a 3-cylinder engine capable of running on two: a car industry first. Upshot? A 20% improvement in the claimed fuel economy and CO2 emissions compared with the old ST. Perhaps of more interest, the new motor is also lighter than the one it replaces.
This is also the first Fiesta ST to have selectable driving modes: Normal, Sport and Track. As you cycle through them, that engine gets fruitier and fruitier-sounding as its active exhaust and engine sound synthesising system combine to bring additional layers of noise. There’s a distant flavour of the original 5-cylinder Focus ST both about the way this engine warbles and its torquey mid-range feel.
Selectabledriving modes add to the ST's sense of theatre, especially in terms of the ferocity of the exhaust note…
I’m not totally sold on the time it takes the crankshaft to slow down from high revs, I have to say (it’s a function of the counterbalance measures that 3-cylinder enginesneed in order to run smoothly at low rpm). Can’t help wondering, either, how much faster the engine would spin, and how much more power it would develop, if Ford dropped the flywheel completely. Still, perhaps that’s just me. All in all, there’s certainly plenty of urgency, plenty of character and, in spite of the torque, a likeable willingness to rev.
In lots of ways, the Fiesta feels like the car it replaces: it has meaty, fixed-ratio steering with which it’s easy to gel in spite of its pace, as well as supreme handling response and brilliantly flat body control – which we’ll get to. But the way it rides is something else.
Body-hugging, ST-branded Recaro sports front seats are a feast for the eye and are a boon in the twisties.
Having only driven the car at a test track I can’t tell with certainty how it might deal with a British B-road, but there’s quite a lot more suppleness and ride dexterity here than there used to be. Over what lumps and bumps I could find on our test drive, over which the outgoing ST’s dampers might have bristled and its body fidgeted, the new model’s suspension just sucks up the punishment and lets you get on with it. Perhaps more importantly on surfaces over which drivers of theold ST might have felt the need toapologise to their passenger for theselfishness of their buying decision,I suspect you won’t in the new one.
And that’s a bit of a revelation: aFiesta ST that passes the girlfriend/mother-in-law test. Hurrah.
Equally brilliant is the car’shandling – although that muchwe expect of a Ford Performanceproduct. The ST feels a shade moreprecise in its steering response thanthe last one did, turning in morecrisply, gripping harder and stayingslightly truer to your intended paththan its forebear did as the lateralload builds into the rear tyres. It’scertainly capable of carrying morecornering speed than the old car andit has a bit more mid-corner stability,while traction on corner exit is subtlybut notably stronger than it wasthanks to the machinations of thatQuaife limited-slip diff.
With its launch control engaged the Fiesta ST is claimed to hit 0 from 100 kph in just 6.7 seconds.
But fear not: the car is still abarrel of fun when you disengagethe stability control and unloadthe rear axle. On a trailing throttle,the Fiesta can be teased into easilytamed oversteer more willingly than any other hotsupermini. Its handlingbalance and adjustability remainexceptional, and in a way that speaksvolumes about the philosophy ofchassis engineers who think afront-drive performance car thatisn’t sensitive to controllable lift-offoversteer just isn’t worth their timeand who can’t understand why somany of their rivals seem to be soafraid of the phenomenon that theytry to engineer it out entirely. Luckyfor Ford, I guess, that they are.
Given how many new arrivals havelately come into the market nichethat the last Fiesta ST so plainlybossed, and how short our initial testdrive was, we’ll leave the decision as to whether this car is another FordPerformance class-leader and worldbeater for another day. It’s right upthere, mind you, and as good as anyST-badged Ford I’ve yet driven. Andit’s none the worse as a driver’s car forwhat’s pretty plainly an attempt togive it a slightly broader sales appeal.
When this year’s very best affordableperformance cars are weighed andmeasured, the Fiesta ST will takesome serious beating. But will South African aficionados get to see this highly-praised little car arrive in our market before the end of 2019?Ford Motor CompanyofSouthern Africasays it doesn't have an ETA for the Fiesta ST yet, but we think if Ford can successfully homologate the car for local conditions and bring it to market at a competitive price, it will be sooner rather than later…
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