Ford Fiesta ST (Mk6) | PH Fleet
Rot means Cam's ambitious Fiesta RS concept build hangs in the balance...
It was inevitable, really. After nine years of ownership and over 50,000 miles covered in that time, my beloved Ford Fiesta ST is showing signs of rot. Mainly around the sills, but there’s also some bubbling below the rear window. Of course, rust is to be expected on a 20-year-old hatchback that’s been daily driven for most of its life, and I’m amazed it’s taken this long to appear - but that doesn’t make the news any easier to swallow.
Obviously, rusty sills aren’t necessarily terminal, and they’re pretty common on the Mk6 ST. The side skirts are fastened onto the body, accumulating water and all sorts of muck over time, trapping it against the sills. Fixing it shouldn’t be a huge headache, though it now sits at the top of an extensive list of bodywork fixes (door dent from when a child crashed their bike into it while parked, key mark down the wing from a previous owner, among many other things). The problem is that it puts the brakes on an ambitious and elaborate plan I had for it.
See, for the last couple of years, I’ve been doing some digging into the epic Fiesta RS concept, which Ford debuted in 2004 alongside the ST and Fiesta Rallye concept. The ST and rally car would both make production, but the RS concept was canned about a year later owing to the massive costs needed to build the thing. It was meant to have a 180hp version of the naturally aspirated 2.0-litre Duratec found in the ST, )(though some say that the plan was to turbocharge it) and resemble the rally car, albeit around 20mm narrower. That’s about all I’ve been able to garner, with Ford claiming that it was simply a design study. Even the show car was destroyed, meaning the only thing that remains of the concept is some studio shots on the firm’s online archive.
So, having been bitten by the tuning bug during our project car series, I thought I’d have a crack at turning my slightly tatty ST into the RS that never was. The smart thing to do is sort out all the problems, then add upgrades before nailing the styling. No one makes the RS body kit (all the recreations I’ve seen use the much wider JWRC kit), so the car would need to be 3D-scanned and modelled digitally. And seeing as though the kit would add so much width to the car, mucking about with the chassis didn’t make all that much sense until the body was sorted.
That brings us to January this year. Having just bought the BMW 435i Gran Coupe, which took over the role as my daily driver, the plan was to get the Fiesta serviced and MOT’d before sending it off to get scanned. So I drove down to Regal Autosport in Southampton with a list of fixes that needed doing before visiting the MOT centre. It’s a fantastic outfit, as you may have seen if you joined us for our Sunday Service there at the end of last year, and the team are brilliant at whacking together a project car. My thinking was to start off with a service, and hopefully bring it back to them once I had some upgrades to bolt on.
As mentioned in previous reports, finding a Ford specialist in my local area has been nigh on impossible and most of my local garages have little interest beyond getting the thing fixed and out the door. The great thing about the Regal squad is that they not only know what they’re doing (which, again, has been hard to come by) but they’re proper enthusiasts. Most have projects of their own, and humoured me while I recited my RS project for the umpteenth time. And when I told them I’d be going on holiday and wouldn’t be able to pick it up for a couple of weeks, they seemed more than happy to hold onto it until my return.
Granted, there were no great shocks when the call came to say the car was done. All the potential MOT-failing bits were sorted and the warning light for the brake fluid had vanished. Advisories for corroded dampers and windscreen chips (which were filled in but visible) were expected, too. It’s only the sill corrosion that came as a surprise, and while it’s certainly fixable it does scupper the Fiesta RS project somewhat.
Not only that, but it’s changed the way I look at the car. The plan was to hold onto the car for as long as possible, because it isn’t really worth anything and has been absolutely bulletproof in my ownership. But I’ve now been presented with a few painful bills just to keep it MOT fit, and it’s going to at least need the sills, dampers and windscreen doing to clear the next one. All money that I’d like to put into making the 435i as tidy as possible, but I need a manual hot hatch of some sort in my life. If only to keep my eye in with an H-pattern.
What do I do? Keep it running, put some money into all the little bits that need doing so as not to postpone the RS project indefinitely? Or has the time come to move it on to a new owner? I’d hate to see it go, but I’d also hate to see it fall into a state of disrepair. Advice very much appreciated...
FACT SHEET
Car: 2005 Ford Fiesta ST
Run by: Cam Tait
Bought: April 2017
Mileage: 144,000-ish
Last month at a glance: Rot sets in. Time to ditch?
Previous reports
How many people regret keeping a car? It's very few compared to the number that regret getting rid.
You know this one, and a bit of welding is to be expected. Try and replace it with another in the future and you may end up with a right dog.
The BMW is white goods...
How many people regret keeping a car? It's very few compared to the number that regret getting rid.
You know this one, and a bit of welding is to be expected. Try and replace it with another in the future and you may end up with a right dog.
The BMW is white goods...
These are never going to be that valuable, its 22 years old and even mint ones arent huge money, you could drop a fortune into it and its a still a very leggy one thats been welded, if you do sort it do it because you want to drive it, not any notion its ever going to be worth much. If you have the time, space and inclination maybe have a go yourself ?
These had a following but they were never that popular, largely overshadowed by the Clio 172/182 at the time.
Having owned a Panda 100HP, there are a multitude of owners finding that although the body looks pristine, as soon as those side skirts are taken off, there can be literal holes in the sills from trapped debris and lightly salted moisture. Despite what many think of Italian cars, they don't actually rust as badly as many...cough...Japanese...cough.
At this mileage and age, I'd say keep and sort. I wouldn't think the repairs required would absolutely break the bank and replacement dampers mean upgrade time
I have no interest in either car, but I appreciate that the writer considers the BMW as a daily, reliable driver that does a job, and the Fiesta as a toy that he will spend money on. If it were me, I'd want something slightly more exotic than a Fiesta, but we all said that about Mk1 & 2 Escorts in the 90s and look what happened to them.
How many people regret keeping a car? It's very few compared to the number that regret getting rid.
You know this one, and a bit of welding is to be expected. Try and replace it with another in the future and you may end up with a right dog.
The BMW is white goods...
Get it fixed up & take it on a week and 000s miles road trip to the Alps next August-September.
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