SPECIFICATIONS
Model:
Ford Fiesta ST. Price in UK: £13 595 (about R160 000)
Engine:
1999cc, four-cylinders, 16 valves, electronic multipoint fuel injection, 110kW at 6000rpm, 190Nm at 4500rpm.
Transmission:
Five-speed gearbox, front-wheel drive.
Performance:
206km/h, 0-100km/h 7.9sec, 7.81 litres/100km official average.
Don't laugh, but I've had a brilliant idea that could, at a stroke, significantly improve road safety at no cost whatsoever. It came to me as I watched the new Ford Fiesta ST (for Sports Technologies) pull up outside my house.
"My" car came equipped with two broad racing stripes - a £200 (R2350) optional extra - running the length of the car from the bonnet, over the roof and down the tailgate.
It was a strangely cheering, nostalgic sight: a new car with go-faster stripes. The intention is to put the viewer in mind of the £120,000 (R1.4 million) Ford GT supercar, which also has double white lines running along its spine in homage to the Ford racers of the 1960s, but it also makes the car look a bit like a skunk.
And who on earth would spend £15 200 (about R180 000 at 29/03/05), which is the cost of my car with its £1500 (R18 000) of optional extras, such as figure-hugging seats and side crash bags, on what is actually a fairly decent, fast hot hatch, and then turn it into some kind of post-ironic, Essex boy pastiche?
Well, whoever they are, they certainly shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel of a lightweight, 206km/h car with quickened steering responses, lowered suspension, alloy wheels and 110kW under the bonnet.
So here's my revolutionary idea: go-faster stripes should be offered as an optional extra on every car that has more than, say, 100kW: Kia Magentis, Aston Martin DB9, everything.
It shouldn't be too tricky to rig up the ordering systems of the manufacturers so that, whenever any customer chooses this option, some kind of klaxon sounds at head office and some suitably qualified medical professionals are immediately dispatched to the showroom.
Meanwhile, the salesman will know to stall the customer for as long as possible - offering him tea laced with a mild sedative, showing him photos of old Ford Capris, perhaps leading him to a small viewing room with The Cannonball Run showing on an endless loop - until the doctors arrive, check pupil dilation, brain activity, blood pressure and so on, and then have the customer committed.
This is my dream plan, and even though our Government's attitude to motorists suggests that, given another election win, anything is possible, I would settle for any go-faster stripes customers simply to be refused a car and invited to select a less powerful motor - a sit-down lawn mower perhaps. The world would undoubtedly be a safer place, don't you think?
Capable chassis
Now, a de-striped Ford Fiesta ST is another matter altogether; in fact it has a great deal to recommend it. For starters it is a Fiesta and so has a very spacious interior and the controlled, capable chassis of a far larger car.
Granted, the ST version has an edgier ride, but it is still more comfortable than, for example, the new Mercedes A-Class.
Perhaps chastened by the pit-bull manners of the Focus RS (no longer in production, and already verging on legendary), the Fiesta ST is a gentler machine with fewer of its larger sibling's front-wheel-drive torque-steer, tyre-shredding vices.
The engine is raucous-in-a-bad-way (things get very strained above 4000rpm) and not quite as vivacious as its rivals (the Renault Clio 182 and Honda Civic Type R) but, as you'd expect of Ford, the ST is cheaper and it had enough spunk to keep me grinning long after the novelty of the racing stripes had worn off.
And you know what? Now I come to think of it, I'd definitely have mine with the skunk lines. Nurse! - The Independent, London