Electric cars are quiet? Yes, they normally are, but not when they used to be a Ford Fiesta that has now been turned into an all-electric race car built for rallycross.
The thing with production EVs is that they're made to feel comfortable, to be the ideal daily driver that doesn't invade your senses in any way, allowing you to relax on your way home after a hard day's work. They do that thanks to their electric motors which are much quieter than the regular internal combustion engines, but also by using plenty of sound insulating materials because, as you're about to find out - if you don't already know - electric powertrains aren't intrinsically quiet.
To be fair, a race-spec Ford Fiesta like the electric one in this clip, with its free-flowing exhaust and performance-oriented engine setup, would have been three times louder, but still, it's always nice to hear the sounds an electric vehicle makes, even if they do feel a little bit alien after a century of internal combustion engines.
The Fiesta in question is actually a Rallycross-spec vehicle developed by STARD, the Austrian company ran by a certain Manfred Stohl. If that name sounds familiar it's because you might have heard it before during a WRC transmission back in the early 2000s. The Austrian race driver used to battle the likes of Sébastien Loeb, Marcus Grönholm, or Peter Solberg, and even though his best result was a fourth place overall in the 2006 championship, we can all agree that still makes him one hell of a driver.
In the meantime, Stohl has founded a company called STARD (STohl Advanced Research and Development) which builds and sells rally-ready Ford Fiestas and Kia Cee'ds to anyone who's interested. In 2014, the company also started its rallycross EV project, and let's just say the car has come a long way since then.
It's built on an R5 Ford Fiesta, which is a rally car made by another company called M-Sport on the basis of a stock Fiesta ST. Stohl says they chose this as a starting point to keep the costs down, but an all-electric Fiesta RX will still set you back $450,000, so we don't even dare to think what the "inexpensive" option was.
Still, you get a lot of performance for that money, even though it doesn't come in a lot of car. It puts out 450 kW, or 612 PS, or 603 hp - no matter how you look at it, that's an insane amount of power for a small hatchback. Then you remember EVs make their torque instantly, and you learn this one has 737 lb-ft (1,000 Nm) on tap. Finally, you realize that, like any self-respecting rally car, it has an all-wheel-drive system, meaning it's equipped to make the most out of those numbers. By this time, it's getting quite scary.
It's not even that heavy. Weighing in at 3,200 lbs (1,450 kg), it's only roughly 440 lbs (200 kg) heavier than an R5 Fiesta, but vastly superior in performance. The weight is kept down by making everything that can (or is allowed to) be made out of carbon fiber, hence the awfully loud noise you get inside.
It also only has a 32 kWh battery, which is enough to give it a 12-lap autonomy, which is more than a rallycross car needs to complete an entire race. And even when the battery is down, it can be recharged on the spot in no more than 30 minutes. Apart from the price, there is really no reason why this thing shouldn't become any rallycross driver's weapon of choice.
If you're still not convinced, just watch Jamie's experience riding net to Manfred for just one lap. Skip to the 8:20 mark for the action if you can't be bothered with the details and try to spot even one second where his face isn't transfigured by the largest smile it can possibly take.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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