2014 FORD Fiesta ST Review

That being said, let’s start this review with a spoiler alert: the Fiesta ST is as bonkers as it's usable on a daily basis. Don't think for a single moment that this little bugger is so extreme it'd be a headache to drive to the shops and back home.

It's an effervescent, living thing that will plaster a big grin on your face, even if you're not in the best mood for its tiny turbocharged insanity.

When looked at from six feet away, the Euro-spec Ford Fiesta ST looks pretty similar to its humdrum cousin with the 100 horsepower 1.0 three-cylinder EcoBoost engine. It's got two doors and the same headlight and taillight design cues as the run-of-the-mill Fiesta, but that's where the visual similarities end. The face has a hell of a lot of pragmatism to it with its suckerfish aesthetics and the black-painted honeycomb mesh grille.

Whereas the normal Fiesta has been criticized to look too much like a miniature Aston Martin, that can't be said about the Fiesta ST and the sharp, wide trapezoidal grille adorning its front fascia. The ST's front bumper has been pumped with some steroids as well, making it look taught and muscular, while the fog lights are tastefully integrated in their angular black surrounds.

Looking at it from the side profile, you'll see a pair of big doors, which offer easy access into the cabin for the driver and its passenger, but aren't that great in crowded parking lots. Even so, the XXL-sized doors are eclipsed by athletic wheel arches which house a quartet of 265/40 R17 BF Goodrich g-Grip tires.

This is a purely subjective opinion, but when I first saw the rear of the 2014 Ford Fiesta ST in the flesh, my eyes weren't caught by the subtle spoiler or the exhaust exits. Ford decided to garnish the ST's bottom with a diffuser which incorporates a body color-painted trim running from one side of the diffuser to the other. Our test car was painted Molten Orange, a €700 option which is worth every penny, and the black diffuser contrasted beautifully with the thin trim finished in that poisonous hue.

When the first pictures of the Ford Fiesta ST showed up on the Internet, the pixels didn't do it for me. I believed that it was a pimped Fiesta dressed in an expensive paint job, but once the supermini hot hatch emerged in the flesh before me, I knew I had wrongfully appreciated its go-faster credentials.
You might have observed that unlike our other test drives, this one is riddled with photos from the manufacturer. Are you wondering what happened? We’re much obliged to unravel the mystery.

As it happens, electronic devices such as DSLR cameras and memory cards go kaput when you expect them the least. As a punishment for this epic fail, our photographer was whiplashed with a timing belt for his expensive equipment’s flop and forced to eat French fries thoroughly cooked in transmission oil.

With that mishap out of the way, let's get back to our Fiesta ST review. Once you open the door, you can't get over the fact there's a chromed scuff plate with ST lettering illuminated in the same orange hue as the exterior finish. Those come bundled in the ST Design package, which also adds LR3 17-inch alloy wheels and red brake calipers for a mere €200.

Another option that's worth ticking off from the list is the Comfort pack. Priced at €300, this bit of kit further glorifies the ST's sporting credentials with smoked windows and Keyless Start. Speaking of the latter, someone intended to cut corners with the expenses, considering how Keyless Start leaves the steering column looking cheap. That slot where the ignition key normally goes in is now just a round, prominent piece of plastic that doesn't look nice at all from the perspective of the front passenger.

In terms of room, there's no problem at all with the space available for the driver and his sidekick. Both headroom and legroom are great, but that can't be said about the occupants in the rear. With a wheelbase of just 2,489 mm (98 inches), there's limited room for five adults in the Fiesta ST.

The sorry soul that happens to take the rear middle seat will scream in agony from how little space he or she will have there, while the other two will either hit the roofline with their heads or struggle due to limited legroom. Never ever take occupants over 1.75 meters (5'9") tall in the rear or you'll hear a lot of swear words for the lack of space.

Wheelbase alone isn't to blame for the little space in the rear. The truth is that legroom in the rear is more compromised by the two-tone, body-hugging Recaro bucket seats. Both hip-hugging and comfortable, the cloth & leather Recaros represent the highlight of the interior.

Any smidgen of sliding around is eliminated by deep thigh bolsters. I know what you're thinking right now, but that's not as you might've expected. The cushioning and fair levels of support make the Recaro set considerably more comfortable than the seats you might find on a normal Fiesta. Even when you fidget about in heavy traffic, looking right and left before rocketing into an intersection, there's enough cushioning in there to keep any fatigue away.

What about the in-car technology? Compared to the US-spec Ford Fiesta ST, the European model we tested didn't benefit from SYNC II and its touchscreen command center. This is SYNC Gen I, which coupled to a fairly good and unpretentious Sony audio system offers an overkill amount of buttons.

In addition to this ergonomics mess-up, the upper dash is as plasticky as on a normal Fiesta. The air conditioning controls aren’t too inspiring either, but hey, the Fiesta ST is a pretty cheap motor.

It is priced from €20,650, which makes it less costly than the Volkswagen Polo GTI, MINI Cooper S three-door, Opel Corsa OPC, Renault Clio RS and the latter's manual-equipped brother - the Peugeot 208 GTI.

It may be a smudge under the price of the Corsa OPC and considerably more affordable than its other rivals, but one thing's bugging me with the 2014 Ford Fiesta ST.

This being a test car, a lot of people abused it before I got the chance to do so. Some of them weren't too fond of the dynamic stuff in the twisties, which is probably why they connected their smartphones to SYNC via Bluetooth. To the point, my frustration is with the SYNC multimedia system.

Let me explain – every 15 minutes or so, the tiny and low-res screen on the dashboard informed me that an offering is needed to make SYNC happy. The Blue Oval's infotainment system is pretty fond of connecting a smartphone to it via Bluetooth, but it gets tiresome after a while. You know SYNC, I refused you once, twice, a third time and you still insisted on pairing up with my phone.

A no is a no and I couldn't find any menu to make SYNC stop from its Bluetooth hook-ups. Other than that, the limited gizmos onboard are just what you would expect from a car this size. One notable exception was the lack of satellite navigation, which is a huge rip-off at €2,300.

If you're not a tech-savvy guy and want to know how much shopping you can do with this Fiesta ST, you'll be happy to find out the trunk is pretty usable thanks to its 294-liter (10.4 cuFT) volume. It's not much, but it's enough for a weekend trip for two. Then again, couples that need some extra space can always fold the rear seats flat into the floor for more cargo volume. 

Power and torque figures may lead you to believe there's a difference between the US-spec and European 2014 Ford Fiesta ST in terms of grunt, but that's not really the case. Ford says the Fiesta ST sold Stateside develops 197 horsepower and 202 lb-ft of torque. Our test car's specs sheet shows 180 horsepower and a mere 244 Nm. So what's the deal here and why the difference?

Well, Ford's marketing department didn't make it quite clear that the Fiesta ST has an overboost feature. In gears three through six, the 1.6-liter EcoBoost powerplant will enter overboost between 2,500 and 4,000 rpm for up to 20 seconds at a time. As such, the turbo produces 21 psi compared to 18.9 psi it normally does.

Ford's US marketing department accounted for the overboost feature in operation with those 197 horsepower, but the European department decided to go modest on this one and advertise what the engine churns out without the help of the overboost feature.

The 1.6-liter EcoBoost may hark back since the 2010 model year and can be had on the Escape and Fusion too, but it's still a cracker. It likes to rev like it's possessed by the God of Hooning and pulls in every gear with little turbo lag. The sound it makes isn't as burbly and luscious as, let's say, what the Renault Clio RS boasts about, but we're not complaining at all.

What Ford is calling the sound symposer is an amplifying membrane that makes the turbocharged mill sound good in the cabin when operating high in the RPM range. But the exhaust sound on the outside is sedated and the downshifts and lift-off crackles of the MINI Cooper S cannot be found in the Ford Fiesta ST's aural repertoire.

Looking back at other six-speed manual boxes I've handled over the years, this one's quite forgiving to use in the city. Short throws are the name of the game here. To boot, the manual's gates are as well defined as the work schedule of a train driver from Japan. Even for the stick shift-shy, this unit is a joy to row gears with and works in perfect harmony with the perfectly placed pedal box for heel and toe duties.

In the urban jungle, there's little to dislike about the Fiesta ST. Even the 10.8 l/100 km (21.7 mpg) fuel consumption is great for an engine as highly-strung and as potent as the 1.6-liter EcoBoost we have here. The electrically-assisted power steering geared at 13.7:1 is also good for driving in the city and maneuvering in tight parking spaces.

What's not so great for city driving is the 15 mm drop in ride height and the ST-specific suspension. It's not shaky and jittery, but there's a pretty obvious go-faster-oriented balance between the stiffness of the springs and the uprated dampers on every road imperfection you pass over.

In addition to these and the specially tuned torsion beam at the rear, the Fiesta ST swaps the drum brakes of the normal Fiesta for disc brakes and that shows especially under hard braking duties. Out on the open road, the ST's agility belies its weight distribution, making the quirky supermini extremely swift but consistent in its directness.

A pair of shorter steering arms and an ST-specific knuckle are to thank for this, but there are other things I'd like to point out on the handling front. You know how most B-segment hot hatchbacks squirrel the grip off the front wheels, torturing their tires at full attack mode? You'll rarely get that in the Fiesta ST.

Although cost issues didn't permit Ford engineers to fit a full-fledged limited-slip differential up front, there's something almost as good to take care of the way this supermini darts on a B-road's twisties. That's a cool little gizmo we petrolheads refer to as a Torque Vectoring Control system.

It isn't a full-on engineering revolution, but the eVTC system is laden with anti-slip electronics that replicate the way a mechanical diff gets you out of trouble.

With all due respect to the guys that like to take a car to the limits of grip and beyond that, this eVTC is a great asset, making the Fiesta ST deliciously playful when you start manhandling the wheel and push the loud pedal through the footwell. It is the feature that got me to prefer the Fiesta ST over my previous favorite hot hatch, the Renault Clio RS.

Compared to the French pocket rocket, the American supermini doesn't feel too technologized. You need more talent to squeeze out the best the Fiesta ST has to offer, whereas the Clio RS' electronic nannies help even the faint-hearted look like Ayrton Senna in the corners.

To round things up nicely, the 2014 Ford Fiesta ST is ace, simple as that! It may suffer from the lack of touchscreen navigation and some odd-quality plastics here and there, it may have less oomph than its main competitors, but the fact is that the Fiesta ST is the most fun. What it boasts with on paper doesn't matter as much when you hop in the driver's seat and start driving this little dodge ball on wheels.

While its bigger brother, the Ford Focus ST, wins the power-to-weight ratio battle, the Fiesta ST trumps the Volkswagen Polo GTI on this matter and it's a more responsive vehicle to chuck around in the corners, making it more fun than its rivals. It's a surprising product from a manufacturer whose performance models of the past were limited exclusively to prancing ponies.