Project Fiesta ST

One man's deranged quest to build the ultimate hot hatch.

[projectfiesta-blog]

Finally back at it

Well, it’s definitely been a long break this time. Things have been insane at work and I finally quit my job today. All in all, it went pretty well. Thankfully I’m starting a new job at an awesome company in a couple of weeks. And on top of that, I’ve planned out the remaining mods for the Fiesta...  

So let’s get down to business. The FiST is an awesome sports car and an awesome daily driver for a city commute, but you already know that. So far I’ve really only focused on power gains, but power isn’t really what this car is about and it’s time to start thinking about how to take the experience to the next level. 

Without further adieu, here are the list of mods in no particular order and then I’ll explain my thinking/motivation for each one:

Vinyl wrap and tint

Lighter, better looking wheels

Short shift kit and white Cobb Knob

Interior vinyl and Alcantara upholstery 

Sound system upgrade

Vinyl and tint

My car is stock molten orange. It’s a cool colour, but it doesn’t match the personality I’m after. I’m going to have it wrapped in a satin metallic agate (gunmetal) vinyl and likely de-badge the “Fiesta” chrome. I haven’t settled on removing the “Fiesta” -- I actually kind of like the idea of keeping it either in its original chrome or possibly dipped in a darker grey than the vinyl. The reason I’d consider keeping it is that it’s disarming and I don’t want the car to look like it takes itself too seriously--it’s a Fiesta after all. My plan is to do about a 10% tint on the glass, and maybe 5% on the lights and Ford badges to give them a smoked effect. I became seriously jealous of the smoked lights and badges on the Cayman GTS when I had my S. I contemplated doing a fake carbon fibre wrap on parts of the car just for fun (mirrors, rear diffuser, maybe the spoiler) but I’ve decided that would be too boy racer for my taste. I don’t want the car to look silly valeted beside a Ferrari. People know what a Fiesta ST is and the car should look proud of what it is. 

Lighter, better looking wheels

I have the grey Rado wheel and brake upgrade. I think the wheels actually look pretty good, but they’re also one of the biggest opportunities to drop some unsprung mass and visually differentiate the car. I’d like to go for something that’s a compromise between street and classic WRC. I really like the black painted O.Z. Racing Leggenda. Initially I was keen on the Team Dynamics wheels but I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about manufacturing defects and just general quality problems. The North American arm of the company seems kind of shady. O.Z. on the other hand seems to have a great reputation. I think the black painted wheels would look pretty sinister on a gunmetal car.

Short shift and new shifter

This is one is a no brainer. The Fiesta gearbox is awesome, but the throws are just a little bit long. Cobb’s short shift kit has excellent reviews and a lot of people say it’s the best mod they’ve made. I’m planning to go that route as one of the last mechanical changes to the car. Also, the stock shifter knob itself is pretty pedestrian. I hate to be a total Cobb fanboy so I might not go with their knob, but it does look pretty nice and the white one would be a nice accent.

Interior vinyl and Alcantara upgrades

This is really the feature piece. I’m going to bring the exterior colour of the car into the interior by wrapping some of the flat plastic surfaces with the same exterior vinyl. This would include the faring over the infotainment system, the area around the shifter and probably the face of the head unit. Even more exciting is the Alcantara, though. I’m going to be working with some interior resto and customization experts to carefully introduce some Alcentara into the interior. This will include the shifter boot, parts of the steering wheel, the door pulls, the lid of the console storage compartment, and some parts of the seats that are already leather/vinyl. 

Sound system

The stock sound systems is absolute crap, let’s be honest. I’m not a huge audio guy, but I want the Fiesta to be a semi-capable GT car and that means having a solid sound system. I really don’t fully understand my options around this yet, and I’m still researching local shops to figure out where I should go for design and integration, but it will happen.

All of that is going to take 6 months to a year I think, and is probably going to cost about $6-8k. I’m very happy with the stock chassis setup and brakes, but I might look at options for upgrading those down the road. I don’t want the suspension to be much stiffer than it already is and I’m not sure I like the look of the 17″ wheel in the wheel-well when it’s lowered--the wheel already fills out the wheel-well nicely. 

Anyway, that’s all for now. Next update should include some pictures of the progress.     

[projectfiesta-blog]

It's been a while...

I haven't written a post for a few weeks, mainly because I've been too busy out terrorizing pedestrians and cyclists with the Fiesta. Having just dumped about $5K into the car I'm obviously slightly biased towards thinking the upgrades were worth it: psychological self-preservation or whatever you want to call it. That said, I'm extremely happy with the most aspects of the COBB package.

The car feels much more hardcore now. Most of that comes from a bit (not an annoying amount) of exhaust vibration that you can feel in the cabin and especially through the steering wheel. It's a fairly subtle change that actually makes a surprising degree of difference in the sensation of performance. 

The torque gain is probably the most noticeable thing. I'm running the 93 octane ECU map on 94 octane fuel and can blow the front tires of in 4th gear with a good poke. In that way it's kind of like driving a muscle car--if you want to drive fast (and not just loud and smokey) you need to apply the throttle very carefully. If you leave the ESC on, the wheels are harder to break loose but the car feels a bit constrained. Maybe that's just psychological. 

From inside the cabin the exhaust note isn't so much a note as a fog horn. It's not too loud, but you get quite a bit of whistle and a fairly uniform bellow (drone) out the back. It does have a few different tones across the RPM range and it's actually really growing on me. You get a nice little pop when you engage the clutch above 2500 RPM and plenty of popping and crackling on the overrun. I think it sounds better and less manufactured than the Fiat 500 Abarth exhaust. Apparently removing the sound symposer will eliminate some of the drone if you’re not into that, but honestly the car sounds stock when you’re not on it.

I spent about 6hrs driving down through WA in the Fiesta last weekend and I’m really impressed with how solid the car feels at speed on the highway. Fuel economy on the high performance ECU tune is definitely down, but the little car will get from 10 to 75+ mph very quickly without breaking sweat (or your ear drums). Obviously there isn’t heaps of power laying around (it’s a tiny turbo after all) so if you want it to be responsive you need to be in the right gear and keep the boost up. 

[projectfiesta-blog]

Achievement Unlocked: COBB Stage 3

The FiST is officially a COBB Stage 3 Torque Monster! I'm going to post a longer write up on my first impressions, but for now I'd just like to say a) the guys at Garage Five did a great job and b) the FiST is a formidable sleeper now. If you drive it well, it's a seriously fast car. More on all of the above coming soon...

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Torque Steer

So... yeah. This had to come up eventually. The ugly elephant in the room for any high performance front wheel drive project is torque steer. So the million dollar (okay, maybe $26,000) question is: does the FiST torque steer? 

There have been some horrible front wheel drive sports cars; I don’t want to name names, but everyone is looking at you, Mazda Speed 3. There are lots of things that have made them horrible, but one of the biggest challenges with sending significant power through the front wheels is getting that power down evenly. Those who have failed to meet this challenge (ahem Mazda, ahem Vauxhall) have ended up with cars that pull violently from side to side under even modest acceleration. Under hard acceleration, things just get worse.

The Vauxhall VXR is another notorious failure

The FiST already sends a couple hundred ponies through the front wheels, and as I mentioned, I’m planning to bump that up a bit and extract some more torque. So... am I expecting epic torque steer? No.  

Ford has put an incredibly smart front differential in the Fiesta ST. Under hard acceleration you can occasionally feel the front wheels fighting independently for traction, but it pulls in a straight line. I’m more concerned about the same things you would be with a rear wheel drive car, namely getting the power down without blowing the tyres off.

[projectfiesta-blog]

Fast Cars and the FiST

The majority of car enthusiasts don’t have any first hand experience with objectively fast cars. We’ve watched a lot of Top Gear (RIP), have a lot of opinions, and have never driven anything with more than 140hp. There’s nothing wrong with having opinions based on second hand information--especially when it comes to multi-million dollar super/hyper cars--but I do take issue with people dismissing things like the Fiesta ST out of hand. So I’d like to take a few minutes to explain how I think it stacks up.

I’ve never driven what I would consider to be a really fast car. Before I bought the Cayman I test drove a lot of fast cars, and I would consider the Cayman to be a fast car, just not a really fast car. So I’ve done non-trivial test drives in recent model 911s, the Jaguar F-Type RS, newer M3s, and several fast Audis. I had the 981 Cayman S for about a year, so I know what a high calibre modern sports car should feel like. Now, I’m not going to stand here (okay, sit here) and tell you that the FiST stacks up 100% to an upmarket modern sports car--it doesn’t. It’s lacking in a few things:

Pedal feel: the clutch and throttle do provide a lot of feedback, but they’re very light compared to a “serious” sports car. Initially the lightness and shorter travels are a bit disconcerting (engaging the clutch is more of a toe action than a leg action) but you quickly adjust. Because there is feedback and resistance through the pedals (some cars have absolutely none) it’s more just an adjustment in sensitivity to the smaller car than a feeling that something is missing entirely.

Ride quality: modern upmarket sports cars are comfortable and even luxurious at low speed, high speed, whatever speed. Most of them will either automatically adjust the dampers to suit your mood, or allow you to do it manually, or both. The FiST is rough and ready all the time--you can adjust the traction control, but the suspension is always in sport mode, if you take my meaning.  

Sex appeal: enthusiasts will give you a nod for the ST badge, but people standing in front of restaurants aren’t craning their necks to check out your ride. A blip of the throttle in the Cayman or the F-Type is more than enough to get noticed--people will point and occasionally take pictures when you’re driving a car in that bracket.   

You might be surprised that I didn’t put build quality on that list. Are the panel gaps tighter on a new Porsche than on the FiST? Yes. But the “gap” in quality isn’t anything like what it used to be. The panel gaps on the FiST are tight and uniform--I haven’t felt the need to get my digital callipers out and have a diabolical German laugh attack at Ford. The interior materials are great--I had the full leather package and sports seats on the Cayman and, to be honest, I like the FiST interior more. 

“Oh sod it, might as well go for a drive.” - James May

I mentioned in a previous post that after the first round of modifications, the FiST will have the same power to weight ratio as the Cayman S, and actually a few more torques. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that the Fiesta will be anywhere near as fast at the Cayman. And of course the dynamics of the cars are completely different, with the Fiesta being undeniably inferior. The point I’d like to make is that while terrible cars (e.g. the Reliant Robin) and excellent cars (e.g. the Nissan GTR) are fun to drive for different reasons, the FiST is actually more the GTR variety of fun than the Reliant Robin variety. I won’t put it in league with the Porsches and GTRs, but it is not a “fun because it’s rubbish and it falls over” type of car. It’s not a “fun because every time I chuck it into a corner I feel like I might die” type of car, though admittedly there is a whiff of that, which makes it surprising and exciting to drive. Unlike the Robin though, the sensation is more like driving a midway ride that you know is safe, but feels a bit dangerous at certain points. 

So where does that leave us? Well, the Fiesta is a real sports car in my mind, and my perspective is that of a Porsche enthusiast. I might even (after a couple of pints) argue that looks aside, the FiST has more of the classic 911 about it than the current generation 911 does--the manual gearbox, skinny tyres and feisty personality.  It’s easy (and socially acceptable) to dismiss these “little” cars but you might find some of them, certainly the Fiesta ST, are worth a closer look.        

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“This should be illegal”

I’ve said enough about the stock FiST at this point. It’s an awesome car. It’s a driver’s car. But I didn’t buy it to keep it stock. So what’s the plan?

The FiST has 860km on it now, of which I’ve driven 840. I think it’s important to get a feel for a car before you decide on modifications. So having chucked it around Vancouver for a month and wrung it out on the north shore a couple times I’m starting to get a sense of direction. The chassis and suspension are insanely well sorted so my first priority will be squeezing a bit more power and torque out of the little 1.6T. Following that will be some brake upgrades to match the power and probably a stickier tyre.   

Thanks to COBB Tuning, and the availability of 94 octane fuel in British Columbia (thanks Chevron!), I’m expecting to get about +40bhp and +80lb-ft of torque (bringing the FiST up to about 240bhp and 280lb-ft at the wheels) out of a cold air intake, a bigger intercooler, a fatter down pipe, a less restrictive turbo-back exhaust and an ECU tune. The extra power is nice (the car doesn’t really need it) but the main win is that 80 or so lb-ft of torque: in my experience torque is the bigger factor in whether a car feels fast, especially around a city. You can drive a V12 Mercedes saloon with heaps of power that feels slow as hell. Nobody other maybe Kimi Räikkönen has ever gotten out of a car with heaps of torque and said, “Well, I was spinning the wheels all the time, that car feels slow...”

After phase I modifications, the FiST will have the same power to weight ratio as (and slightly more torque than) my Cayman S

Before we get too far along, you should know two things: 1) I listen to NWA while writing these posts, so if the tone gets a little bit aggressive, that’s probably why, and 2) my vision of the ultimate hot hatch is essentially a very fast, very fun city car, not a track car. It should absolutely be trackable, and indeed I’ll be evaluating the limits of the FiST at Mission Raceway, but I’m optimizing for city-street conditions. That plays into the modifications in a pretty significant way, mainly around the ride height, suspension stiffness, wheel size and camber, tyres, etc. So if you’re sending me an angry email about a particular choice I’ve made, please keep in mind that this is a street-focused car--I don’t want to be scraping bodykit on uneven ground in Vancouver’s downtown alleys. If you were building this car for track days or rally cross I’d say only thing: you’ve probably chosen the wrong car. Good luck.

The parts for phase I are coming from COBB in southern California and should be arriving April 17th. I’ve got the guys at Garage Five doing most of the install because I can’t lift the car enough to hang the new exhaust myself. 

COBB’s 200 cell catted down pipe and turbo-back exhaust for the FiST   

When I started explaining Project FiST to a colleague of mine, her first reaction was a mix of shock and awe: “This should be illegal!”, she exclaimed. With a grinch-like smile consuming my face I simply replied, “Probably.. but it isn’t..” I’m sure the smugness was tangible. 

The new intercooler is substantially larger than stock

I’m not really an advocate of dynos (rolling roads) except for a) determining whether an engine rebuild is necessary/justifiable in an older car or b) developing really precise ECU maps for a specific car runing a specific fuel grade, etc. Different dynos tend to produce different results, and I think it’s pretty widely understood at this point that those numbers only tell a small fraction of the story anyway. All of this is to say that I probably won’t be posting dyno results for my FiST any time soon. 

Phase I should be complete by the 25th, just in time for a test drive from Vancouver to Nelson.  

Up next: brakes, ultra-light wheels and probably illegal tyres... stay tuned!

[projectfiesta-blog]

Why the FiST

The Fiesta ST (FiST) is one of those rare cars that has made it from conception to production without being completely ruined in the latter phase--it’s undeniably a thoroughbred hot hatch, but price aside (the FiST is a bargain) why choose it over options like the John Cooper Works Mini or the Fiat 500 Abarth?   

When Ford put the ST badge on the already-very-good Fiesta, they didn’t just add an aggressive-looking body kit and call it a hot hatch. In fact, most of the changes weren’t aesthetic at all. They gave it more power, lowered the ride height, tightened up the suspension, fitted some relatively big disk brakes front and back, and put it on aggressive summer tyres. They got the interior right as well: Recaro seats with chunky bolsters, a shorter, notchier shifter and a sportier steering wheel--basically everything you’d want in a sports car. 

People keep asking my why I didn’t get an FRS/BRZ. Well, in comparison the Fiesta ST is lighter, slightly more powerful, has considerably more torque, handles better and is consequently quicker most of the time. Yes, the FRS is rear wheel drive and will happily oversteer given the slightest invitation, but the Fiesta will also oversteer, and it’ll cock the inside rear wheel--a classic hot hatch trait--in the process! Besides, the FRS is a budget compromise in it’s category, the Fiesta ST is not. 

 1.6L in-line 4 Turbo - 200bhp@6000, 202ft-lb@4200, 0-100kph in 7s. 

Of course there are some other excellent hot hatches on the market; the JCW Mini, the Golf GTI and the Fiat 500 Abarth, to name a few. Each has its merits, and in the case of the Mini or the GTI, there are quite a few merits. The GTI was too serious for this project--it’s a damn good car ja, but a tad boring and unsurprising. The Fiat’s awkwardly high centre of gravity and very upright driving position make it feel more like a sporty little bus than a hot hatch. The Mini is great, but also has a whiff of German seriousness about it that says “Heritage and Quality Engineering” instead of “Handbrake Turns and Vandalism”, which is more the spirit of Project FiST. 

So the Fiesta is a unique proposition really; it’s not a budget sports car, nor is it a semi-pretentious retro throwback (looking at you Fiat... and you Mini), but instead stays true to the hot hatch recipe: equal parts family hatchback, sports car and bar-brawling hooligan. What more could you want?    

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Hatched

Two weeks ago I sold my Porsche Cayman S, picked up a new Ford Fiesta ST and embarked on possibly my most ludicrous project yet: to build the most insane, most orange, most badass hot hatch ever.  This is Project Fiesta ST. Welcome aboard.