GOING AWAY PARTY

Ford plans to axe its livewire hot hatch but a last-minute tweak sends it out in style

This is the most fun you’ll find in a new car for less than $40,000. In fact, the Ford Fiesta ST is more fun than a lot of performance cars that cost 10 times as much. Much cheaper than a Subaru WRX or Toyota 86, the Blue Oval’s smallest car combines a punchy turbo engine with a thrilling approach to cornering that exudes driving joy.

Firm suspension and razor-sharp steering result in lightning-fast reflexes rarely found outside the realm of exotic supercars. It works well enough while driven sensibly, but truly comes alive when you press on.

It borrows from great hot hatches such as the Peugeot 205 GTI and Renault Sport Clio by lifting a rear wheel into the air when you attack a racetrack corner, dangling a tyre in the breeze as you dab the brakes and chuck it into a bend.

Closely stacked ratios in its six-speed manual transmission encourage you to make the most of its hard-working engine, while a limited-slip differential and Michelin sports tyres do their best to harness 147kw and 320Nm. That’s not a lot of power. But this isn’t a lot of car.

It shoves you back in the seat to the warm sound of three turbocharged cylinders accompanied by rumble and pop percussion from twin exhausts.

Lower the windows and you’ll hear the turbo build and release boost with a distant woof and flutter. There’s joy in extracting every last watt from the motor every day – something you really can’t attempt with absurdly powerful machines at the top of the performance-car food chain.

Unlike a big-dollar BMW M3 or Porsche 911, the Fiesta ST is fun to thrash on the workday commute or grocery run. It’s like the difference between a revolver and a popgun.

One is fun to play with every day (even if it’s a bit juvenile) and the other requires club membership, careful handling and appropriate space on private land before you pull the trigger.

All of which makes it puzzling to find that Ford has decided the Fiesta ST is no longer appropriate for its showrooms.

Having ditched regular versions of the Fiesta and Focus hatchbacks, Ford recently announced that high-performance “ST” versions would be deleted at the end of the year.

The cars are simply too niche, attracting too few customers to justify a place in the local lineup. That might be because the Fiesta is quite expensive, as compact hatchbacks go. Priced from $33,490 plus on-road costs (about $37,500 drive-away), the Fiesta costs roughly twice as much as the most popular model in the lightcar segment.

FIRST DRIVE

But it is loaded with tech you won’t find in budget alternatives, including a 12.3-inch digital dash, matrix LED headlamps, a 10-speaker Bang and Olufsen stereo, 8-inch infotainment screen and 18-inch alloys.

It has seven airbags and auto emergency braking, but the global microchip shortage pushed Ford to remove a couple of safety features from the recently updated model – blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert are missing in action.

It’s not perfect. The steering is too quick, there’s no automatic option, its deeply bolstered seats aren’t welcoming to all body types and the brakes won’t stand up to the rigours of track work. Enthusiasts might only care about the last point, but that’s easily fixed.

It also goes without an AM radio, though the omission is unlikely to offend the few folk looking to spend almost $40,000 on a tiny but sensational hatchback.

Lord knows there aren’t enough of them.