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Who doesn’t like a small fast Ford?
The company has been adept at producing exciting, affordable warm and indeed downright hot hatchbacks over the years. We took a drive in a bunch of them, and this is our guide to Ford's Fast Fiestas:
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Mk2 XR2
Power: 96bhp
0-60: 8.6-secs
Years produced: 1984-1989
The first car I ever drove was a mk2 Fiesta – my grandmother’s 1.1 L – so the XR2’s cabin feels instantly familiar. It’s tiny, narrow enough to make it easy to reach over to wind the passenger window up or down without stretching. As befits the XR2’s status at the top of the tree there’s more equipment than I remember, including a rev counter, a sports steering wheel, a sunroof and even a five-speed gearbox.
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Desire
The mk2 Fiesta was basically just a heavy facelift of the mk1, with a smoother front end and – in the XR2 – a new overhead cam engine from Ford’s CVH family. Ford had honed its skill in dressing up mainstream machinery with generations of go-fastered Escorts and the XR2’s chunky bodykit, rear spoiler, driving lights and big wheels gave it a far more aggressive stance than its more basic sisters.
Relatively cheap changes, but ones that transformed the Fiesta into a desirable little machine and enabled Ford to sell it for a chunky supplement. It worked; at the peak of the XR2’s popularity it represented an amazing 25 percent of all UK Fiesta sales.
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Enthusiasm
The CVH engine family became infamous for both boorish manners and a tendency to self destruct at higher mileages. But it was easily tuned and the Fiesta’s 1.6-litre unit pushes out 96hp while breathing through a carburetor – nearly as much as its more expensive fuel-injected rivals.
It still pulls impressively hard, enthusiasm magnified by the fact this Fiesta weighs just 850kg, pulling with a rorty enthusiasm and only growing coarse as the red line approaches. The gearshift is notchy and the shift action imprecise while the brake pedal’s lack of initial bite is briefly alarming; Ford didn’t move the brake servo on right-hand drive Fiestas, and it’s therefore operated by an infamously flexible linkage. Throttle response is mustard keen, though – and although low-geared the unassisted steering feels good.
What’s missing is dynamic polish; there’s a reason the XR2 finished down the rankings in most contemporary comparison tests. But it’s enthusiastic and exciting, lots of flash for not much cash, a recipe that its successors would try to follow.
PRICING: Decent examples to be had from around £4000 - restored ones head over into five figures.
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Mk3 XR2i
Power: 105bhp (Zetec engine)
0-60: 9.4-secs
Years produced: 1989-1994
Few performance cars have ever received as lukewarm a reaction as the mk3 XR2i, introduced in 1989 at the same time as the bigger and more sensible mk3 Fiesta. The ‘i’ stood for “injection”, but you get the strong sense from contemporary road tests that it could just have well meant “inspid”.
I’d never driven an XR2i and I got in hoping to prove the haters wrong and to find an unfairly abused performance gem. But within a couple of minutes I had to admit that history has called it entirely right – this is pretty much the antithesis of a 1980s hot hatch. There’s none of the enthusiasm of the XR2, but pretty much the same level of crudity. It doesn’t even look good – the bizarre quad-lamp front bumper being all that really distinguishes the i from its lesser sisters.
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Ergonomics
The third-generation Fiesta got a larger and better-finished cabin, although one that seems to have been constructed using the gloomier end of the plastic palette, and the driver’s door shuts with more of a thunk than the tinfoil mk2. Ergonomics are better and there’s more equipment; even a radio that’s capable of searching for FM stations by itself.
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A cautionary tale
Early mk3s got a fuel-injected version of the CVH engine, but later ones like this car had the subsequent “Zetec” generation powerplant – the one that went onto have a trim level named after it – complete with twin overhead camshafts and a boot badge boasting about the all-important fact that the engine breathes through 16 valves. The 1.6-litre unit had 105bhp (a brawnier 130hp RS1800 was also offered) but the mk3’s porkier 965kg meaning the XR2i actually has an inferior power-to-weight ratio to the XR2.
On the plus side, the engine is keener to rev than the XR2, although it makes increasingly pained noises at higher speeds. The clutch bites high on this 99,000 mile example, but the gearbox feels more precise too. But the XR2i’s ride still feels punishingly firm, setting the cabin trim squeaking over bumps, and the unassisted steering is even heavier than in the XR2. The handling balance pretty much isn’t, with varying degrees of understeer and nothing else. There’s precisely zero sense of dynamic involvement.
PRICING: You really want to know? From around £2000.
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Mk5 ST
Power: 148bhp
0-60: 7.9-secs
Years produced: 2005-2008
There’s a missing link here – we couldn't track down mk4 Zetec S to test. Although it was always on the tepid side of hot I remember it fondly as being basically the more sensible sister of the Puma coupe. Instead let's look at the mk5 ST, the first of the cars here to have been built in Germany. After the XR2i it’s a revelation, like moving from a Porsche 356 straight into a modern 911.
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Adjustable
The cabin dates from Ford’s grayest era, with cheap-feeling plastics and all the surprise and delight of Christmas at Scrooge’s house. The seats have leather bolsters and there’s an “ST” badge at the base of the steering wheel, but that’s as exciting as things get. Starting off also reminds me that this ST made do with a five-speed gearbox, well after most of its rivals had moved to six. The exterior styling also struggles to build on the Focus-lite looks of the basic mk5 Fiesta with chunkier bumpers and a dinky rear wing clinging to the top of the tailgate; Ford did offer a set of GT-style bonnet stripes as an option in the period.
It’s still an absolute peach to drive, and not just because I’ve swapped straight from the XR2i. It's immediately obvious that its chassis comes from the other side of Ford’s rediscovery of driving dynamics. The ST has plenty of grip, good steering feel behind its power assistance and a handling balance that gets close to elasticated sweatpants for ease of adjustability.
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Sweetly agile
Backroads quickly demonstrate that the ST feels vastly more composed when asked to travel quickly than either of its predecessors, and that its chassis has far more answers to awkward questions. It’s reactive and agile with a degree of throttle adjustability that’s completely missing from the XR2i.
Yet I’m also reminded of why the ST struggled against the similarly priced R56 Mini Cooper S and Renaultsport Clio 182. It’s just not that fast. The 2.0-litre engine was adrift on power and needs to be beaten to deliver, with short gearing doing little to disguise the fundamental lack of punch. It’s a sweet thing, nice enough to see me researching prices in the classifieds as soon as I get out, but it’s not the best hot Fiesta.
PRICING: Decent examples from £2000 - and well looked after ones could start heading up in value, we dare say.
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Mk6 ST
Power: 179bhp
0-60: 6.7-secs
Years produced: 2013-17
And so we come to the mk6 Fiesta ST, which was current up until very recently. It manages to be something that none of its predecessors were: a truly international hot Fiesta. While the earlier cars were built in Europe for European tastes, this ST was sold around the world, including in the USA.
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Upmarket
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that, when compared to the other cars here, it feels like it’s in a different league, maybe even playing a different sport. The box-fresh example we tested feels like a well appointed toy shop compared to even the decade-old mk5 ST, with soft mouldings, climate control and even a colour display screen on top of the dashboard.
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A bargain
This is obvious enough; more surprising is the way that – on the road – this ST proves to have far more dynamic bandwidth than the older ones, feeling vastly more comfortable and also sharper than all, bar the first gen ST. The turbocharged engine pulls hard and although there’s some lag, especially at low revs, this adds rather than subtracts from the experience. Grip levels are much higher than any of the other generations, but this ST is easy to place on the road and just as throttle-adjustable as the first one.
The really interesting bit comes when you consider money. The new Fiesta ST Mk7 has just gone on sale for a base price of £18,995. That is, obviously enough, the highest here by a considerable margin, but plugging its predecessors’ pricetags into a historic price calculator suggest that, with inflation factored into the equation, the ST is a bargain. The 1989 XR2’s £8430 works out at £20,000 in 2018 money - not bad considering the mk7 ST has almost twice the power of the XR2.
PRICING: Mk6 Fiesta STs from £8000.
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Nostalgic charisma
If this was a straight grouptest then the current ST would win in the same way a flamethrower beats a snowflake. Nearly three decades of evolution shows just how far the supermini has developed. But nostalgia is a powerful force and, given a free choice, I’d drive home in the XR2 and keep it forever. It’s rough and ready, but it’s also the most charismatic car here.
Let's take a look at all the other Fast Fiestas:
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Mk1 Fiesta XR2
Power: 84bhp
0-60: 9.9-secs
Years produced: 1981-1984
One of the earliest compact hot hatches was powered by a tuned version of Ford’s evergreen Kent OHV engine, had headlamps from the mk2 Escort Mexico, pepperpot alloys and lurid vinyl graphics.
PRICING: not many left, so even vaguely decent examples now heading north of £10,000.
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Mk3 RS Turbo
Power: 133bhp
0-60: 7.9-secs
Years produced: 1990-1992
Ford had built turbocharged Escorts before, but this was the first Fiesta, and the first to carry an RS badge. Blown version of the CVH engine was easily tuned and so even more easily blown up.
PRICING: Rarity now boosting prices to approaching £10,000 and sometimes more.
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Mk3 RS 1800
Power: 128bhp
0-60: 8.3-secs
Years produced: 1992-1994
The ‘other’ RS Fiesta which replaced the RS Turbo and used the mk5 Escort XR3i’s 130hp 16-valve 1.8-litre Zetec engine. Less easily tweaked than the Turbo and therefore less popular.
PRICING: From £5000.
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Mk3 1.6 Si
Power: 90bhp
0-60: 10.4-secs
Years produced: 1994-1995
Award yourself a prize if you even remembered this one: Ford’s response to the XR2i’s shonky reputation and soaring insurance ratings was to axe it and introduce a less powerful version with a retuned chassis.
PRICING: Rare as hen's teeth, so very hard to say.
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Mk4 Zetec S
Power: 103bhp
0-60: 9.9-secs
Years produced: 1999-2002
More of a warm hatch than a hot one, the Zetec S is fondly remembered for its sweet chassis which used many of the same parts as the closely related Puma coupe.
PRICING: £2000+
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