Seventeen AgainFess up, the vices we had at seventeen are still etched in our psyche we just know we`re going to pay for them if we play them out! I might be the wrong side of thirty, ok, forty, but that shouldn’t preclude me from enjoying the same type of car say someone twenty years my junior gets a hard-on about. The truth is, I can get just as aroused by driving something with a bit of fire in its belly as my eldest daughters boyfriend can. My only problem is that my body isn’t so supple anymore and to ask it to suffer a spine-jarring suspension and stupidly hard seats will wipe me out for days.
Right, now I’ve got that out of the way, on to the new Ford Fiesta RS. The RS stands for Rally Sport which will give some type of indication this hasn’t been built for the middle-age and slightly overweight person who prefers loafing to loafers. In fact, I’m not quite sure who will be slapping down £24,740 to buy one. Even if the aforementioned daughters’ boyfriend can pull out the spondoolies, trying to get insured will cost the equivalent of the national debt. My age group? Well, insurance premiums for a group 19A will be more favourable, but I can’t see any of them driving it for more than a week or two before their osteopath orders them to sell it.
And all this is shame because this Fiesta RS is stingingly good, even better when pushed to the limits. See, for short, unadulterated, self-gratifying, drives along quiet twisting roads, this is the best car in its segment. You’d need a Porsche Cayman S to better it. However, as with most things that are truly genius it is slightly flawed. Yes, the Ricardo seats have been fashioned from a 15th century torture treatment and concrete has more flexibility than the independent Revo Knuckle McPherson front struts, but these small failings were to be expected. What was a surprise were the vast amount of torque-steer, and this, apparently, has been lessened thanks to a limited slip-differential. Producing 300bhp and 442Nm of torque with an over booster is one thing, trying to channel it smoothly is another. And in a front-wheel drive car, the problem just becomes even greater. All that happens when you put your foot down – especially prevalent from a standing start - all of those three-hundred gee-gees start to breakaway in an unruly stampede and the steering wheel becomes possessed, taking on a life of its own. It takes the strength of Sampson to tame them, but once under control things do become a little less frenetic.
So those are the bad bits, the rest is all good. There’s a very pleasant note to the exhaust, more a growl really, and the handling is sublime, far more direct than the previous version. The cabin has accents and an extra set of dials should you forget the pedigree the RS. You’ll even get a slightly larger fuel tank, which will come in handy because around town the best you can expect from the 2.5-litre engine is 21 mpg.
This car is more suited to the track, far more than roads. Perhaps that’s why only 4000 will ever be sold here. And out of those 4000, I suspect most will be brought by middle-age men who think the RS will restore their passing youth. If that’s what they want, then let me suggest they buy the new Golf GTi. It might be marginally slower, have less of a rumble and viewed upon as pipe-and-slippers meets Viagra Man but every time they get out if it they won’t be cursing and cussing because their vertebrae have been fused together by a car designed for a much younger person to drive.
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