Published:
22 May 2013Were it not for the bolstered support of the new two-tone Recaro front seats, you could almost be forgiven for mistaking the Ford Fiesta ST’s interior as standard fare.
Even closer inspection reveals only detail alterations. The gearlever and pedals are dressed in alloy, the steering wheel wears a small ST badge and the traction control function – usually hidden in Ford’s sub-menus – is given its own unmissable button on the centre console.
It’s possible that some prospective customers might find the lack of differentiation a little disappointing, but Ford would argue that the ST is a sober performance upgrade rather than a brazen RS-style assault on the senses.
Still, for our money, the result is thoroughly agreeable. Added to which, further confetti would only have inflated the car’s bottom line, and we like the price where it is. This does mean that the Fiesta’s familiar weaknesses are also the ST’s, but we can live with those.
In an ideal world, there would be a larger multimedia screen (at 4.2in, even the upgraded one in the ST-1 is too small) and navigating its cluttered menus wouldn’t be quite such an ordeal, but these are trifling incidentals to gripe about in a hot hatch. Even with the upgraded Sony stereo system, the infotainment system is still clunky to use and rather difficult to do anything simple while on the move. It is worth point out that you need to invest in the ST-3 to get sat-nav included as standard.
