![]() The sound quality is impressive enough but the system wouldn’t be high on the list of things we would spend extra on. It increases the car’s speaker count from six to ten. Our test car was fitted with Ford’s optional B&O Play premium audio system (£350). Finding your way in and out of CarPlay mode can be tricky, with no ‘home’ button on the row of shortcuts just underneath the main screen, but that apart, usability is decent. The SYNC3 system can be voice-controlled, and works fairly well when given clear instructions. But when both lower-end systems include Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring as standard - and particularly since Ford’s navigation system isn’t all that great - you can easily do without. Entry-level cars get a 6.5in touchscreen infotainment system and mid-level ST-2s get an 8.0in screen. You have to climb all the way up to our test vehicle’s ST-3 specification on the Fiesta ST’s showroom ladder to get a car equipped with a factory sat-nav system. The car’s freestanding 8.0in touchscreen infotainment system is respectable for its usability and its features, although it doesn’t give the Fiesta quite the sense of technical sophistication of doesn’t quite match the latest one or two of its rivals. A reorganisation that made the latter more accessible, at the expense of some of the former, would have been welcome. The spokes of that wheel are busy with buttons for the car’s cruise control, trip computer and infotainment systems – while those for the car’s engine stop-start system, electronic stability control system and selected drive mode are on a console that’s a bit tricky to see, on the far side of the manual handbrake lever. The instruments are simple, readable analogue dials, visible through the orbit of a sensibly proportioned steering wheel with a squidgy but not overly chubby rim. ![]() One of the advantages of the new engine, says Ford, is that it makes a broader band of peak torque than the old four-pot, that it’s lighter too, but also that it’s the world’s first three-pot automotive engine that can switch onto two-cylinder running under low load conditions. Those match the equivalents of the ultimate version of the last Fiesta ST (the ST200) precisely, although they’re not quite class-leading figures. The springs are a Ford patent they permit the use of softer rear suspension bushing than would otherwise have to be used (which should also improve ride), and they make for a rear axle 10kg lighter than if Ford had adopted a Watt’s linkage to achieve the same result.įinally, to the engine: Ford’s all-new, all-aluminium, 1497cc three-cylinder turbo petrol, which produces official peak outputs of 197bhp at 6000rpm and 214lb ft, and transient ‘overboosted’ torque of 236lb ft. The Fiesta ST also uses ‘force vectoring’ directionally wound suspension springs at the rear axle, which apply a stabilising lateral force on the wheels as well as cradling the car’s mass, and allegedly sharpen handling response. This contributes to what Ford’s chassis engineers describe as a more supple quality to the new ST’s ride than that of the last version. ![]() Damping is via Tenneco RC1 frequency-selective shocks which, though they’re not ‘adaptive’, are effectively double-valved and can switch between softer and firmer settings depending on the profile of the bump being dealt with. ![]() The ST adopts derivative-specific front wheel hubs at the bottom of MacPherson-style strut front suspension, with torsion beam suspension at the rear. The LSD isn’t standard but rather comes as part of Ford’s £850 ST Performance Pack. It is a helical unit supplied by Quaife that works across the front wheels in tandem with a brake-actuated electronic torque vectoring system. Few hot Fiestas have combined class-dominant critical acclaim with segment-leading UK sales quite as well as the last one.Īnother is a limited-slip differential – the first to be offered on any Fiesta hot hatchback. That car sat pretty at the top of the rankings in our ‘hot supermini’ category from not long after the demise of the old naturally aspirated Renault Clio RS 200 until the Fiesta itself was discontinued last year.Īnd so for the third-generation Fiesta ST, which undergoes the road test process this week, a job of consolidation is ahead. Thankfully, Ford finally mastered its fast supermini recipe with the original, 2.0-litre ‘Mk6’ Fiesta ST, and perfected it with the 1.6-litre turbocharged ‘Mk7’ Ford Fiesta of 2013. So, throughout the early decades of the Fiesta’s life at least, the hot version of the car us Brits have held so dear might have been either great or poor – or simply non-existent. After those two had come and gone, the closest the Fiesta would get to having a range-topping hot hatchback derivative (until the arrival of the original ST) would be the ‘Mk5’ Zetec-S of 2000. ![]()
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