Extended Test Drive 2018 Ford Fiesta ST

We made a trip down to Atlanta, GA for Holly's grandmother's birthday and got another rental car. We were originally trying to rent a manual Dodge Challenger but none were available and Holly said no to a Chevrolet Camaro (plus the Corvette was too expensive for our liking this time); we rented the second cheapest car they had at $113 for 4 days (not including taxes and fees). The cheapest car was $111 for the same time span and an automatic Toyota Yaris hatchback.
Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised.
The manual Ford Fiesta variant we rented was a Fiesta ST, the performance version of Ford's smallest econo-hatch. Also, it was orange:

Starting with styling, I rather like the front grill on this. I also think that the headlights are too large for the car though. This is especially true on the profile show below. Also, it would have been nicer if it used HID or LED headlights instead of non-projector halogens.

We learned our lesson and checked the wheels this time. The tires were not bald.

Ultimately my reference point for this is the last manual Ford product we rented in Atlanta, the Ford Mustang Ecoboost.
Holly decided to quote me while I was driving:

It's kind of depressing how much better this is than the four cylinder mustang. If I'm not careful this might actually get me in trouble.

This car felt a lot more peppy and not nearly as lethargic as the Mustang. We were really surprised by the cost of this rental as it was a lot more fun.

Trunk much less functional than BRZ although easier to get to because hatchback.

There was also this weirdly lard amount of space below the trunk floor and above the spare tire. I am really not sure why the trunk floor was not lower.

By way of this being a hatchback the rear had a much easier portal to load things in when open.

With the rear seats folded there was quite a bit of space.

Rear seats much more functional than BRZ. We found it better for rear visibility to remove the rear seat headrests or at least fold them down. For short trips you can fit five adults in this car. The sloping rear roof still provides interesting height limitations on what you can see out the back.

Interior feels a bit cheap and "unrefined". Despite lack of refinement, this is probably the best value rental we have ever had.
Two people and their luggage, four people and two people's worth of carry on luggage, or five squished adults fit in this car comfortably enough.

I liked how clicky the temperature selection dial is. On the other hand I did not like the resistance and click of the turn signal stalk. Tap turn is fine, maybe I should just get used to using tap turn.

The transmission used a reverse lockout the same as out BRZ. The shifter was very vague in terms of placement and felt loose. It was imprecise. While I appreciate that this car was a manual it was not a very good feeling one. If I were to get one of these this is one of the problems I would seek to address. I would want a much more reassuring shifter feel than this car provided.

Front visibility was rather fantastic. We liked it a lot. I would have like the dash about two inches lower but it was miles better than the Mustang in terms of height. We loved not feeling like we were in a claustrophobic bunker.
On the other hand the noise levels in here were definitely economy car levels. This was especially true of wind, tire, and road noise. There was no particularly fun or exciting exhaust note or induction noise. The other noises were therefore more noticeable.

Rear seat passengers are treated to one power outlet and a cup holder.

"Oh shit handle" is slightly less convenient than in the BRZ (a bit of a reach), but it's nicely designed. Holly's seat was pretty far back. After she moved the seat forward, the "oh shit handle" was excellently placed and designed. Still not as comfortable to grip as the on in the BRZ but it was not what Holly noticed when she needed it.
More quotes:

Holly: "Oh shit handle works!"
Me: "It has a little bit of torque steer when you do that."

Holly liked the front seats. I thought the headrest is too hard. I liked the Mustang seats that held my shoulders better. These do not hold your shoulders. I felt like my midsection was well planted but that the top of my body was lacking meaningful bolsters. The seats did not hug me as much as I like my seats to.
Steering wheel has typical volume and cruise control but no next and previous track controls.
All in the the steering wheel was a pretty nice touch point in a car that for the most part lacked good touch points. At least they did not have fake plastic stitching in the cowl over the instrument cluster...

Typical steering wheel controls and a small miniature version of the Ford car information display. The large infotainment unit pops too high off the dash and would be better if the whole unit had been lowered by around three to five inches. This was really obnoxious.
Trip button at the end of the turn signal stalk allows you to cycle through useful screens on the digital display conveniently.

 I REALLY disliked the infotainment system placement and how much visual real estate it ate up while still being pretty paltry in size.

90 turn at 20 mph requires 90 degrees of steering input. 90 degree turn from stop requires 190 degrees steering input. Turning radius rather small and parking is easy. No dead zone at all on the steering wheel, and no hesitation due to oversized wheels and too much rubber or weight.

This car was so much dartier than the Mustang and arguably even than our BRZ. I think this car makes an absolutely fantastic city or autocross proposition. At the same time this darty nature is the vehicles Achilles' heel. It never settled in corners, whether sweeping or not. Maybe not enough toe? Maybe not enough mass in the rear? Maybe the short wheel base?
The fact that you could induce lift off over steer was nice, but... Honestly I did not like the way that this car always felt distracted or upset by road imperfections or the wind or something else. It was twitchy but beyond the point of being stable.
It was so twitchy that even minor in lane adjustments could be "exciting". It needed too much of my attention too much of the time. There was no letting it settle and relaxing. This possibly could be tuned out of the car to an extent. But my impression was that this would be fun at autocross or a really tight road course (think motorcycles) but was too busy everywhere else. Busy to the point of distraction and a lack of enjoyment on my part.
You felt every bump in the road. Damping? What damping?
Not anywhere near as planted as the BRZ, a bit more squirrely and not in a reassuring way. But I would still take this over the Mustang any day of the week (although I suppose I need to give a GT PP1 or PP2 a shot).
While the Mustang we rented drove every bit as big or bigger than it was, the Fiesta ST drives every bit as small as it is (for better, and sometimes worse).

The engine was interesting. The engine feels more torquey than the BRZ. It is not rewarding to rev it out. Might as well shift up 5-5.5k range.
Also the engine feels very small (it is) and like it lacks any real torque on initial start from a stop. There was a real lack of torque from the engine unless you were in boost.
The engine is a 1.6L 16 valve DOHC four cylinder with 197 HP @ 6350 RPMs and 202 lb-ft of torque @ 4200 RPM. The late torque deliver in an otherwise very low displacement engine means there is not much initial power. Honestly, until you hit boost it felt down on grunt and power copared to my BRZ which has (I believer) 200 HP and 150 lb-ft torque out of a NA 2.0L flat four cylinder.

Our final trip fuel economy was 28.4 MPG. The trip computer listed us at 30 MPH average. We put on 119.0 miles and consumed 4.183 gallons doing so. Theoretically we may have gotten a bit more out of the engine if the car was run on 93 octane all the time and the ECU was re-trained but as this was part of a rental fleet and designed to use 87 octane we figured we would not get anything out of it unless we used a full tank on this trip.

As far as engine braking wen 4th gear had little or nothing to offer even coming down from highway speeds. Not until 2nd gear did I get decent engine braking. If you do not blip the throttle (which you probably should to be nice to the car) you do get some nice bite out of 2nd gear.

I was not a huge fan of the pedals (would need to be fixed). Further the clutch pedal felt really soft (coming from a BRZ owner) and had an extremely high (to me) engagement point. I did not like that. I thought that as a rental it might be slipping so I confirmed with a friend that it was in fact very high. I think this may possibly be due to the lack of initial torque from the engine.

I was also disappointed in the brake pedal feel. It was not nearly as progressive as I would have hoped for. It was not quite binary but close.

These cup holders could also glow select-able accent colors.

There was a convenient storage armrest with two USB ports.

The tires were Bridgestone Potenza RE050A which are a max performance summer tire that appear to have okay performance on TireRack. The tire size used is 205/40R17.

Final thoughts:
This is a great car if you need to be able to fit four adults and want something that is fun to drive and makes sense in a city or in Europe.
At the same time its greatest strength is also one of its most obnoxious features. It is extremely twitchy. This would be fantastic at an autocross event or not on the highway or a track with any sweeping turns. But this car required constant input and correction and was too easily upset to hold a line. It was fun until it was not.
Basically, this car is about 7-8 / 10ths of the  way to where I want it to be to drive it daily or on track. But getting it those 1-3 tenths to where I want it would not be cheap and would erode the value proposition of this vehicle.
We would still rent one again in a heartbeat over the Mustang.

But, when we got home from Atlanta Holly and I both had a chance to drive the BRZ for a short bit and ultimately our travels with this Ford Fiesta ST really just served to reaffirm how much we love the BRZ.
Oh, and if automotive journalist want to claim that Ford has an enthusiast sports car that handles and people might want to cross shop with the BRZ it is most certainly this car and not the Ecoboost Mustang.