Triple Play

Ford Is Tempting Fate by Messing With the Winning Fiesta St Formula. However, Sometimes Change Begets Greatness

- Matt Saunders

REMEMBER when hot hatchbacks felt like a break from the rigorous commercial norm of the car business? 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 hatches are now, ahem, hot property. So much so that critical acclaim and buyer demand persuaded Ford Australia to ship in the new, third-generation Fiesta ST from Germany. For quite some time it was looking like we’d miss out altogether Down Under. As a result of its global popularity, it’s evident that time and effort has been lavished on it by in-house tuning department Ford Performance.

Coming along just a year after the launch of the seventh-generation Fiesta hatchback on which it’s based, 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 ‘Team RS’ built its modern reputation: the 2002 Focus RS. 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 expected to be standard in Oz 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 and find enough room for driving impressions over the following pages.

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 percent 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.