I went blue. Which color did you go? After my test drive i cound not stop . This car should be fun in auto X. Surprised that there is a button that changes interior colors.

The evo impressed me back in 2003 being a AWD car that not a pig. This Fiesta impressed me now as a FWD car with little or no torque steer. I never expected Ford can make a car that handles like this.

 

+1. I want to see how much power that thing can make. IIRC, the ST weighs in at about 2720 lbs, so if it is possible to get it up to 300 whp, it would probably be very entertaining.

 

White! It was pretty hard to find in the options I wanted. Nav, sunroof, recaros.

Honestly I still can't believe I bought a Ford.... I guess that says something about it...



Hell even 250whp would be entertaining. 300whp might be too much for this tiny FWD with no LSD. The stock turbo won't do that either. It's *TINY*. While the Focus has a K03 (same as GTi and MS3), the Fiesta has a tiny little Borg Warner KP39, same as 04-06 Golf TDI.

Chad @ CBRD has a turbo in the works though.

 

Little update on mine before I start a dedicated thread...

Had the car a week now and 480 miles. Mainly been driving it to work and back. I started a new job 3 weeks ago and my commute went from 6 miles round trip to 50 miles round trip. One of the main reasons I picked it up.

Here are my thoughts so far.

The chassis is stiff and feels well engineered. Honestly it feels like Fords Evo. Fords little engineering baby. Makes sense since it's developed from Fords WRC car, much like the Evo.

The 6 speed gear box is really nice. It shifts smooth with zero notchiness but also isn't vague. Having a 6th gear for highway commuting is awesome. One of the things I hate about my Evo 10 is the low gearing and lack of a sixth gear. Makes hwy driving a pain in the *** for me. The Evo just buzzes in 5th gear at a super high rpm when you are going 70+. Annoying to me. The Fiesta does the same in 6th at a low 2800 rpm or so with zero engine noise. All you hear is the wind. Speaking of that...

The car is lightweight, small and short with 205 width tires. It gets pushed around a bit more with cross winds than the Evo 10 which creates more small steering inputs which I have to get used to. Lowering it with stiffer suspension will hopefully help this.

I've been averaging 28 mpg on my commute, and that is with some fun mixed in. Totally awesome. On the shorter pure highway driving I have done, 32mpg. I have no doubts it can hit 35-36mpg on purely longer highway driving. Again, totally awesome.

Stock suspension. It's over sprung and slightly under dampened. While it makes the car feel very responsive and very sporty, it gets a little annoying on choppier bits of highway because of the short wheel base and light weight. Smooth roadway it just glides. I actually have a set of Bilstein coilovers on order to help address this. They are approx 100lbs higher spring rate overall but from what I have read the dampening is well balanced and it makes the car smoother overall. We'll see.

The stock Recaros. Totally awesome overall. They are MUCH more snug than both Evo 8/9 Recaros and Evo 10 recaros. They also have more side bolstering but the back curve is more aggressive than the Evo so I'm still getting used to that. The headrests however are set too far forward so if you have them in the bottom position it just feels weird because it pushes your neck too far forward if you rest your head back. Overall I enjoy them and I guess you can always find faults in most things.

I took the car on some twisty back roads this weekend for a couple hours. Man does this car come into it's element there. It's sooooo fun to drive. It's so tossable and just wants to have fun. Even on the stock tune, lots of meaty mid range torque. I drove a couple BRZ/FRS's before this and this car just feels soooo much better in that aspect. Power and weight wise they are about the same but the torque difference is huge. The BRZ/FRS's felt gutless where the Fiesta feels pretty quick and never out of power when you need it when you are driving it hard in it's element.

The car is almost impossible to heel toe well unless you are totally threshold braking. The gas pedal is way lower than the brake. Perhaps they did this for liability reasons. Who knows. Either way it sucks and I have a spacer on order from garage line to help bring it up and in line with the brake. Hopefully this helps.

On Sunday I installed new wheels in my signature black color (I do this on all my cars) with a slightly lower offset and Bridgestone S04 tires. Really makes the car look more aggressive.

I also got my COBB Accessport in and threw on their stage 1 91 octane map. The stock tune has torque reduction in 1st and 2nd gear and now I know why. With the Cobb map the boost comes on strong and it just lights up the tires all through 1st and 2nd gear. I think it probably gets peak boost and torque at something crazy like 2400rpm. They tweak the throttle tables too which totally transformed the car and makes it even better to drive and it feels like a proper turbocharged car now. Stock tuning reminded me a little of the earlier Subaru TBW tuning that was just soggy and laggy.

I also purchased Race tuner which allows me full custom tuning and I have to say COBB did a good job so far. TONS of tables available and man, the Ford MED 7 ECU is C.O.M.P.L.E.X. I have some work to do here and I'm excited to learn the ECU. The USDM Fiesta ST uses SD 100% so that is also pretty awesome. I am also going to start Ethanol tuning on the car, probably at around 1000 miles. I'm going to start with a blend and go from there to see what I can get away with in regards to the fuel setup on the car. It is Direct Injection and I'm hoping it has enough headroom for full E85 tuning with the stock fuel system and the dinky stock turbo. Should be fun!

Since this is a post on Evo forum I'll leave with this. Obviously the two cars are very different. My Evo 10 feels like a hammer, brute force but I feel the weight but it's a great car and feels like you are taking care of business with it. Also remember my 10 is on E85. The Fiesta ST is just a super fun car that you just throw around, it's not super powerful but man is it fun. It doesn't have brute force but it makes up for it with the fun factor and tossability. It's hard to describe but honestly I am having so much more fun in it than my Evo 10 currently. If I want to kick *** and take names, I'll drive the Evo 10. If I want a good time and fun that makes me chuckle, I'll drive the Fiesta ST.

I guess that's why it's called a party...

 

Great post. Makes me want to get one for my commute. Does it have cruise control?

 

Yup, cruise control standard.

Mine also has Nav, SYNC with MyFord Touch, full steering wheel controls and voice commands. Nav has traffic alerts and Sirius TravelLink, weather, etc. Bluetooth, USB, MiniSD. It even has the ability to create a WiFi hotspot pairing with your phone but I haven't even messed around with that yet.

Auto on light sensing headlights
Keyless entry
12v aux power front and rear
Push button start
Auto temp control
Telescoping steering wheel!
Heated front seats and mirrors (With Recaro package)

 

the Focus and Fiesta STs are amazing.. i can't believe they are Ford. i'd really, really, really like to have the Fiesta for a fun daily..
maybe when the Evo is paid off.

P.S. white is best!

 

Thanks for the review. I figures most people will not belive me until they had driven this car.

How is the Accessport? Is that worth the $?

 

great posts. all the scca guys have pretty much gone to the focus st for GS, but it sounds like this car's got just as much potential

 

Totally worth it to me because I wanted the ability to custom tune it myself. So I payed the extra $160 on top of the $450 for the AP with the RaceTuner software which provides custom tuning.

As far as just the AP with their canned tunes. I'd say it's worth it for the throttle remapping alone. Totally transforms the drivability of the car and makes it much more responsive with a very nice torque gain.

 

Another thing to add while poking around in the ECU last night.

There is flex-fuel logic built into the ECU but it's not using it stock. I'm curious to start playing around with that and see if it works or if they turned off the code path for the ST. There is no actual flex fuel sensor but it could be doing it based on trims like some of the newer flex fuel cars do.

The car has a wideband stock, and like the newer VW's, uses it for open and closed loop which is going to make fuel tuning much easier. The ECU overall is torque based so there a billion torque look up tables all over the place. Much like the MazdaSpeed 3 it has gear based tuning not just for boost, but torque and fuel, etc.

It also switches between tables depending on cam position. There are something like 10 different look up points for both exhaust and intake, and about 10 different tables for each. Ford's adjustable cam timing is called VCT and it's both intake and exhaust like the Evo 10.

The ignition timing strategy is super complex and goes between 4-5 different tables like MBT, High octane, low octane, cam position, yada yada.

My head hurts already.

 

Out of curiosity, how much did you pay OTD for it? Feel free to PM me if you don't feel comfortable/just don't want to say it here.

I've been really eyeing that car a lot. Been watching a lot of review videos as well and I can say that I'm really impressed. My current DD is a montero. I love it, but the MPG is really hurting.

 

Around 23k. MSRP was 26,780.

There are a bunch of good incentives out there for the 2014's. The 2015's come out in the next couple weeks. All the same stuff but will be about $500 cheaper overall.

Depending on the options you want, you can go even cheaper. Mine is with Nav, Sunroof, Recaros, Rado wheel/brakes, cargo package.

If you could find a base with just Recaros (good luck) you could probably get it for 20-21k or so.

Also, the crazy tri-coat colors are a $595 charge. Green Envy and Molten Orange. They are cool though and change a lot in different light. Wasn't into the Orange because it looked too much like red. The Green Envy color is VERY different and distinct and actually looks very cool on the Fiesta and I came VERY close to getting mine in green. I chickened out at the last minute though and went white. Still think the green is cool on the car, especially when you mod it.

 

So what's your thought on the rear suspension? From a technical standpoint, it sounds rather unimpressive and cheap, but apparently it works well in practice?

 

I'll tell you more the more I drive it.

I was hesitant about it not having IR suspension but honestly after driving it I had no problems with it. It's not my kick *** and take names car nor do I need it to be so I'm fine with it. I'll probably track it maybe 1 or 2 times a year just to have fun.

The bar rears can work well though if they are designed well. The cobalts where very fast for what they where with the same type of rear suspension.

The nice thing about the rear is it's simple as hell.