2014 Ford Fiesta ST: First Drive

The idea of packing a very powerful engine into a very small car—especially a car originally designed with frugality in mind—isn’t by any means a new formula. It’s been done over and over again, over decades, to spice up lineups and add bragging rights. And while some transcendent models like the Volkswagen GTI, Honda Civic Si, and Mazdaspeed3 have rightly earned that halo over the years, we can think of plenty that were duds.

The Ford Focus ST has fast joined the ranks of those halo models—well-conceived in every way, and truly better than the sum of its parts. But now just below (or beside) the Focus ST slots a 2014 Ford Fiesta ST that somehow sets our hot-hatch heartbeat aflutter. Maybe more so than the Focus ST.

That’s right. The Fiesta ST has neither a such a boast-worthy power-to-weight ratio nor quite as many engineering tricks up its sleeve, but it ends up offering more seat-of-the-pants, go-fast thrills—enough to pull people away from the likes of the Fiat 500 Abarth, MINI Cooper S, and Hyundai Veloster Turbo...and possibly even the larger Focus ST.

And here we were in mountainous Southern France—fittingly, tackling some of the same serious driving roads, like part of the Route Napoleon, that we did with the Focus ST nearly a year ago. As with the Focus ST, we were only there to get an advance drive—a taste—of this European-engineered little wonder, which is coming to the U.S. in just a few months.

Ford's smallest car, packed with EcoBoost

First off, back to that familiar idea: The powerful engine is the new EcoBoost 1.6-liter, with turbocharging, direct injection, and variable valve timing—the same one that we’ve enjoyed in the mid-size Ford Fusion, TCC’s 2013 Best Car To Buy) and the Ford Escape.