Gadgetory

we've gotten an awful lot of high-tech efficient little cars lately but how about one that's got some real old-fashioned guts that may be what we're dealing with right now let's try the 2014 Ford Fiesta ST available only with the 6-speed manual bless their hearts and check the tech so what is the Fiesta ST first of all it's the hatch body car only up front a hot little turbo motor and you got four nice-looking 17-inch wheels all around unique to this car body style quite a bit massage deep front chin a very nice-looking deep aggressive rear fascia deep rocker panel treatment connecting those and a little ball cap lid on the rear hatch what you can't see underneath is a sports suspension what you definitely can see on our car is the color green Envy not as clever as they were in the 70s when Ford had colors like anti-establishment and Freudian guilt but I'll take it not too different than any other fiesta my Ford touch and this connected head unit our base although navigation is optional that module isn't always there in the upper right corner now here's my issue with this my Ford touch which has had plenty of Knox for being too detailed and fiddly in this case it's also too small and too far when I'm comfortably in this car and I'm actually sitting forward for the camera right now that's not really reachable without me pulling myself forward on the wheel to get to it I don't like the Fords that have it up here the little cars the bigger Ford's put it down lower and nearer and it's important to notice that see if it works for you you can also plug in an iPod via USB here's your CD slot right here this car still has optical satellite radio AM and FM and that's also got HD radio on top of that now luckily given the distance and smallness of this climate control is broken out separately down here now we have the optional Recaro seat package in this car which is kind of like that girlfriend you had back in high school who was a foot taller than you just grabs you everywhere we got bolsters here that are so narrow and not adjustable by the way that if you're big of ribcage you almost run aground on them and don't even feel the back of the seat much kind of kind of wedge myself in there big all five bolsters as well if you didn't have these which by the way include heating and heated mirrors this cabin gets pretty plain Jane pretty quick so I pretty much endorsed these nothing unusual in the instrument cluster but one thing is missing overall in this car put it in reverse and nothing happens you can't get a rear camera in this car optional standard or otherwise kind of a weird oversight because given its body design and it's huge c-pillars it's a little hard to see out of in parking maneuvers now speaking of that rear camera notice what I did to try to invoke it that's right 6-speed manual in this car notable because manual gearboxes are getting rare as hen's teeth than many applications and that's the only choice you can get on this vehicle right on Ford one last thing I want to show you this goofy little button right here they're kind of taking a page out of the Kia Soul or vice versa and that is this one that changes the color of illumination around the cabin there's a light underneath here friend of mine was asking what is this for does a pen go there no it's actually for nothing that I can tell except for the light to live under it also controlled the lighting under the footwell and down here in the cupholders port likes these lighting schemes I can live it out now one of the short little snout is a short little engine a 1.6 liter inline-4 sitting sidesaddle driving the front wheels only but it's highly tuned has a turbocharger and direct injection for its EcoBoost combination but in this case kind of tweaked more towards performance the numbers bear that out 197 horse 202 foot-pounds of torque all that going into a car that weighs just a little over 2,700 pounds gets you up to 60 in about six and a half 6.7 seconds with again that one choice only 6-speed manual they've also hotted up the suspension all around so it's firmer a little more aggressive and you've got torque vectoring on this car that's done by the brakes we'll talk more about that on the road in a moment your mpg is really good 26:35 considering how much performance you're also getting out of this car so there's not a lot of sacrifice going on here one thing I want to show you here in the engine bay see this little tube right here that goes into a valve enclosed in this plastic housing under hard acceleration this butterfly valves gonna open up and pull in a little bit of the intake engine sound not the whooshing part but the revving part and that takes the audio through a tube to a outlet somewhere under the dash through the firewall for it's not the only company doing this but it's an interesting statement on the fact that cars have become so well sealed and quiet inside that now when you want a performance model to sound like one you have to circumvent your own engineering to bring in some noise something we used to get for free back in the 60s and 70s there's that nice sound coming through that thing that for it calls the sound simple just a nice little tight engine note nothing raspy nothing intrusive and then when you're not on it things get quiet again so nice little touch I got to say now we're in a twisty road here in the here's what the car does that I love so much it does what all great cars do it loses weight when you get on the accelerator from a 911 to a well balanced Audi to this car the great cars all feel lighter than they really are that's the great attribute and this one nails it clutch and gearbox are real good it's a hydraulic clutch so it doesn't have that kind of I don't know overly light feel of a cable operated mechanism I prefer hydraulic and the gearbox throws are all a good reach not super tight but you know one would call them long now you're gonna read some breathless reviews about this car that say it has absolutely no turbo lag it doesn't have any torque steer and they're wrong it has a little bit of that no one's iron to that out certainly not at this price point so when you're down at low rpms and regular traffic let's say and you need a boost real quick that's when you're gonna miss it it takes a moment for some power to develop if you don't keep the thing on the burner at higher rpms it'll be an issue now as for the torques to your question when the front wheels lose a little grip they scramble around doing this a lot trying to get back on track that's a front wheel drive high torque thing and you can't conquer that either not entirely but all in all the cars balanced it's got a vectoring technology it's not torque vectoring with power its vectoring the inside rear as part of the stability control it'll do a little inside rear drag brake and that'll nose it around and give you a little bit of oversteer or at least prevent understeer the steering is electric assist on this car and I agree with just about everyone who's driven it and thinks it's a great well done system bottom line this car sets out to be practical it's based on a four-door with a decent cargo bay sporting in a way that is really accessible on real roads and economical and it nails those I love cars that set out to do something and do it okay prices as he has to st starts us off at about 22 grand with destination then there's really three things to add to go CNET style 795 for navigation $2,000 for the Recaro package the seats heated and heated mirrors by the way the base seats are also heated and another 800 bucks to get the moonroof purists are gonna delete that to keep the center of gravity and the weight from moving around now all in about $26,000 I think this car is a good value though it's a $26,000 fiesta that kind of throws some folks back on their heels but this car sets out to do a certain mission and accomplishes that well and I like any car that does that whatever the mission is