Top Sports/Performance Car: Ford Fiesta ST

Tuesday, 1 December 2020

The Stuff Top Sports/Performance Car for 2020 is the Ford Fiesta ST.

Porsche who? Tay-what?

Sure, okay, while the Porsche Taycan is a blisteringly good performance car and this is the year that Porsche also unleashed the blatantly excellent Cayman GT4 on our roads, a small Ford still takes this category by, well, being everything a small, hot Ford should be – fun, affordable and as eager as a puppy riding the wave of a sugar rush.

The Fiesta ST is the only version of the latest incarnation of the Fiesta we get here and that is fine by us, because it is an absolute blast, right from the moment you start it up and the three-cylinder engine grumbles and snorts into a characteristic idle.

The Fiesta ST might look like a small five-door hatch, but underneath beats the throbbing three-cylinder heart of a lion.

The engine and chassis are the highlights, with the ST packing an all-new 1.5-litre 147kW version of Ford's brilliant (and multiple Engine of the Year award-winning) three-cylinder turbo engine hooked up to a six-speed manual transmission, the only shifter available. Which just makes us love it even more.

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Ford Performance has jammed some very serious equipment into the tiny Fiesta to make it a true giant killer.

* Top Compact/Small Car: Toyota Yaris

* Top Medium SUV: Mercedes-Benz EQC 400

Yes, that is a manual gear shifter you can see. It is the only option for the Fiesta ST too! Yay!

* Top Medium/Large Car: Volvo S60/V60

* Top Large SUV: Land Rover Defender

The ST feels utterly alive and brilliantly angry in its approach to life, with a fantastically aggressive three-cylinder snarl and suitably pugnacious power delivery.

The Fiesta ST is quite simply one of our favourite cars, regardless of size.

The three-cylinder powerplant is fantastically strong from very low speed and rips its way to the redline, while the soundtrack is appealingly gruff and makes no apologies for having that distinctive triple-thrum.

Ford Performance (the people behind most things awesome from Ford these days) has put some serious effort into making the Fiesta worthy of the ST badge, jamming in things like a Quaife limited slip differential – you know, a proper mechanical one! – launch control, torque vectoring by braking and special Tenneco dampers - the same brand used on the Focus RS.

And, man, does it come together well.

If you were being picky you can level some criticism at the slightly distant steering feel, but the whole package just feels so alive and electrifying that it really doesn’t matter all that much.

Oh, and while you can level all the same praise at both Porsches, neither of them hold the Fiesta ST’s trump card – even with a recent quiet price increase, the ST still slots in under $40k and is an absolute performance bargain for that kind of money.

What else was in the running?

Those awesome Porsches, obviously, but Jaguar also dropped the comprehensively facelifted F-Type this year that was every bit the blend of awesomeness and niggling frustration that it has always been.

Ford’s own Focus ST also made a very strong case for itself, but its slightly sanitised nature (and the fact that it is only coming here with a slushbox) meant it couldn’t quite fend off the feral little Fiesta for our love.

Essential details: 1.5-litre turbo-petrol three-cylinder with 147kW/290Nm. $39,990.

Safety: 5 star Euro NCAP rating and it is absolutely packed with safety and driver assist tech.

At a glance: A feral and fun hot hatch in the traditional sense, but it also manages to be docile and drivable enough that you could live with it as a daily driver. Providing you could put up with the heavily bolstered seats on a daily basis…

Who should consider it: Anyone who actually enjoys driving. Like real driving, not just commuting. That’s it really – the Fiesta ST has a laser-focussed purpose in life and, while it can perform other more mundane tasks, it is simply wasted on anyone who isn’t going to thrash it mercilessly on a winding back road on a regular basis.

Things to consider: The steering and shift action of the transmission are a little bit of a let down, but that is really only in comparison with the utterly focussed and fantastic nature of the rest of the ST.

And those brilliant-looking Recaro sports seats are a bit too heavily bolstered. Particularly if you are carrying a bit of extra bolstering yourself.

What else could you buy?: The most obvious direct competitor for the Fiesta ST is the identically-priced Volkswagen Polo GTI which is also absolutely awesome, but perhaps a little too slick and over-polished, lacking the Fiesta’s feral charm.

If you were a bit mad and had masochistic tendencies you could go for the brilliant fun, but utterly uncompromising Abarth 595 Competizione, again for an identical $39,990.

Then there is also the just-released (too late to be eligible for this year’s competition) Toyota GR Yaris. At $54,990 it is significantly more expensive than the ST, but with a screaming 200kW triple, it is also more powerful, much faster and insanely fun. It’s also entirely sold out of its first shipment too…