Do you ever choose your route according to what car you happen to be in? Now obviously not everyone gets to be as promiscuous in their car hopping as a jobbing car hack but my commute basically presents two choices: sit on the M25 and trundle along or take to the lanes. The dark, bumpy, narrow and often slithery lanes. Both routes converge at junction 17 and, by the time I'm done, both take pretty much the same amount of time to arrive at that point. So there's no time advantage either way.
Which I take pretty much depends on the car I have. So if I'm in the 4 Series it's joining the M25 crowd, trickling along and listening to Radio 4. The Beemer is in its comfort zone here and though time consuming I can dial out the stress and trundle in peace and quiet.
The Fiesta ST driving experience, in cartoon form
Today though I've had got my long overdue first go with
the Fiesta ST
. And that's a car with 'lanes' written all over it. A country lad at heart, I'm more inclined to barrelling along rural roads in a hot hatch than I am mixing it with the grown-ups on the M25.
It's not a route for flash cars though - if the bramble infested pinch points don't scratch your paint the potholes will do for your wheels. Circumstances dictated I had to drive the GT3 back along these roads one dark night the other week and, frankly, it was horrible. I know we've had a video of GT3s rallying and, incongruous as they look, 911s can get down and dirty on roads like this. But I was practically gnawing at the Alcantara wheel I was so nervy and hated every moment.
So if my only choice of route to work was along roads like this I'd be more than happy with the Fiesta. It's just so up for it and exploitable. I probably didn't top much more than 40mph this morning but I had so much fun. Like many recent Fords you sit a tad too high in the Fiesta than you might have initially liked but that's actually quite handy when you're picking lines and avoiding potholes and though the ride's not shy in this context it adds to the excitement. The steering is great too, Ford proving once again it that mainstream cars like Fiestas needn't have dumbed down controls to appease the mass audience. I realise I'm a little behind the curve in my ST epiphany but having read all the glowing reports over the past few months it's great to discover the hype is to be believed.
And in a couple of days we're going to take it to a bloke called Dave in Essex to make it go even faster. Full story on this in due course but even out of the box I'm a fan.