Ford Fiesta ST (Mk6) | PH Fleet
Cam was lucky enough to be a judge at Salon Privé this year. Guess what he turned up to Blenheim Palace in...
A few days ago, I found myself woefully out of place in a multi-million-pound queue while waiting to enter the grounds of Blenheim Palace for Salon Privé. The cars ahead of me were a mix of Lamborghini Revueltos, Ferrari 488 Pistas and the odd Porsche 911 GT3. I, on the other hand, had brought along my 2005 Ford Fiesta ST, gently roasting inside while the broken air conditioning failed to keep the cabin cool during a late-summer heatwave.
“Hi, I’m clearly not in the same group as them”, I told the impeccably dressed official directing traffic onto the main lawn. “No”, was the answer I got back, along with a look of confusion and mild disapproval. And that’s probably what the supercar owners lined up ahead of me were thinking, too. Little did they know, however, that in just a few hours the roles would be reversed and I’d be judging them in what has become one of the most prestigious concours events in the country.
Oh, the irony. If you’ve been to one our of Sunday Services over the past couple of years, you’ve likely seen my ST parked up next to Ben’s RS3 (or his many previous cars) and, perhaps, thought it looked like it was in need of some TLC. Which it most certainly does. To cut a long story short, I bought my ST back in 2017 as a fun station car for not a lot of money, given that it was fast approaching six-figure-mileage and had a few imperfections (keyed door and wing, scuffs on bumpers, scabby wheels and so on). Most of these I’d planned to rectify in my first year of ownership, before chopping it in for something a bit more sophisticated (I fancied an E92 Alpina B3 at the time) a couple of years later.
Inevitably, life got in the way with a house purchase and wedding ultimately leaving me with just enough to keep on top of the car’s relatively inexpensive servicing and maintenance. It’s on over 130,000 miles now, and despite a handful of blemishes and a few tired components (I’ll get to those in a bit), it’s in fine condition. And that’s one of the reasons that led me to it in the first place: a Renaultsport Clio 182 was similar money seven years ago and would have been the better driver’s car, but the ST was (as is) still huge amount of fun to drive and felt better put together - and that’s hugely important for a completely skint grad.
Anyway, back to Salon Privé. The organisers had kindly invited PH to be on the judging panel for its new-for-2024 Concours Masters event, which was focused less on the nitty gritty (matching numbers, spotless engine bays etc) and more on the subjective stuff (i.e. how much do you want to take it home). So while there was a degree of impostor syndrome - and it did feel a bit rich marking a car down for patches of swirling paint - an exquisite spec or rare colour far outweighed anything as trivial as carbon sills having a few bits of gravel stuck in them.
Most of the cars up for judging were sublime, with an Aston Martin V8 Vantage N430, immaculate Mercedes SLS AMG and a beautifully restored V12 Jaguar E-Type all getting the nod for awards in their respective categories. However, one car stood head and shoulders over the rest: a dark blue One-77 paired with matching diamond cut wheel and a gorgeous midnight blue leather interior. Its owner came over for a chat after we’d finished marking it up, telling me it was one of only seven right-hand drive cars made and that he’d upped the mileage by a factor of ten (400 to 4,000) in his year-and-a-bit of ownership. What a hero. Naturally, he and the Aston were handed top honours.
After a day of decadence poring over multiple millions of pounds worth of supercars, a trip home in a 20-year-old ST, Duratec screaming at 4,000rpm in fifth, will snap you back to reality rather abruptly. In all fairness, I'm not sure if I'd have as much fun driving home in an ultra-limited Aventador SVJ 63 Roadster than I would my scabby Fiesta. I’ve been fortunate enough to drive some incredible cars in the last few years and almost all of them have been more capable than the ST - yet only a few have been genuinely more enjoyable to drive. There’s no traction control in my Ford, the steering is packed full of texture, it sounds magnificent and you have to change gear very manually. Yes, it’s a bit noisy on the A40, but it's a price worth paying for a car that plays the rorty, fun to drive hot hatch so well.
That said, with house and wedding boxes now ticked, I should crack on with sorting it out. The dampers and bushes are knackered, the engine mounts could probably do with being refreshed and the wire mesh around the down pipe has split, causing a buzzing sound when you start it up. Not to mention the numerous scuffs and bits of faded paint that need addressing. It’ll never be a concours car (obviously) but I am finally getting a bit fed up with people saying “It looks great; from a distance."
As for my long-term plans, I’m a bit torn. It’ll soon be retired from daily duty, as I’m on the lookout for something four-door saloony and automatic for my wife to drive (X350 Jag XJR, F30 BMW 335i currently on the shortlist), but whether it remains stock or gets treated to some light upgrades is something I’ve yet to decide. Alternatively, I’ve got a plan for a project car that probably qualifies as a pipe dream at the moment, but one I think the fast Ford lot would be rather keen on. More details in the next update…
FACT SHEET
Car: 2005 Ford Fiesta ST
Run by: Cam Tait
Bought: April 2017
Mileage: 130,000-ish
Last month at a glance: concours judging in the world’s tattiest Fiesta ST
Standard ones just look ‘right’
Mine was Performance Blue with the OTT stripes.
I purchased a 2006 1.4 zetec climate for a few hundred quid a couple of years ago just as a daily shed, it turned out to be a fantastic car, handled really well and even the 1.4 made the car feel lively enough to make driving it great fun, I loved it and was sorry to see it go!
Having owned the 1.4, I would love to see what the hot version would be like to live with...
Standard ones just look ‘right’
Mine was Performance Blue with the OTT stripes.
edited to add: The Clio was bought from a local Renault dealer who's owner was a competitive racing driver. It came with 17" Team Dynamics alloys and sat slightly lower to my eye. So it may well have been tuned too, and the pace of the thing would back that up!
Bags of fun if not a natural cruiser.....did find afew bits dropping off but cheap to mend
Much underated and unfairly maligned in early road test verdicts.
Find a nice one now if you can
Great wheels, understated rear spoiler, just a very smart looking car.
Reasonably reliable - a front spring broke and tried to kill me by rubbing the broken tang on the inside of the tyre. The rubber smell led me to stop. It also had an annoying TPS fault, not sure if it was the pedal or the throttle body but you couldn't buy the TPS separately so it was a £400 fix - or would have been had I bothered to fix it. IT also liked to occasionally put all the warning lights on but a restart got shot of that.
It was not fast, with its 150hp and the handling was reasonable, given it was never meant to be super rapid. I only sold it because on one stormy and rainy night, some d*ckh**d in a lorry came down a narrow lane so I had to back up, straight into a stone wall that was built out into the road, folding the rear 3/4 like a piece of origami. Needing a car for work, I p/x'd it to a dealer and replaced it with the immeasurably superior Fiesta ST Mk 7 in black. However, Ford Panther Black is not a deep black so I changed that for a Speed Blue ST with the 215hp Mountune pack and that was just about perfect and absolutely ideal as my daily driver. What a stunning colour!
I sold that (and still don't know why but it was worth more post-Covid than it was when I sold it on the cusp of Covid).
I would have bought a Mk 8 Fiesta ST had Ford not decided to throw away the deep metallic blue and give us a colour card of insipid dull colours to match the bland styling.
So I have a soft spot for the Mk 6 but it will forever be over-shadowed by the Mk 7 as the pinnacle of my ST overall experience.
Don't get me wrong would love at 55 a Mk8 ST200 just not a Mk6 ST 150 .
Mine was silver with the red and black part leather interior. There is just something meaty about them. Proper substance.
I drove a friend's Clio (albeit the 172) and that just felt tinny. Flimsy, almost. Faster, yes. But not as satisfying as the ST.
Standard ones just look ‘right’
Mine was Performance Blue with the OTT stripes.
Imho out of the box the Ford was too stiff to be really good on broken roads, the non-Cup Clio 1x2 was much more supple.
Both great cars mind.
Great to see more Concours events taking place that involve a little more heart and soul than the dusty inspection of VIN numbers and matching screws. Good to have both forms of judgement.
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