Ford Fiesta ST long-term update 3

Our Fiesta ST long-termer has been conspicuous by its absence from these pages these last couple of months. Don’t feel special, it’s been missing from my driveway for the same length of time.

You may remember that a couple of months back, I was happily filling the Fiesta’s little fuel tank with PULP when a trailer on the other side of the servo driveway clipped the Ford’s driver’s side rear quarter. Ouch.

The damage was limited to the quarter itself and the alloy wheel which was scraped beyond repair. So, back out to Broadmeadows for a little factory TLC, then.

Which was fine, but Ford is in the business of providing shiny new cars, not patching up battered, six-month-old ones. So the repair work was farmed out to a workshop that Ford uses for such matters.

Only problem there is that it was apparently a busy time of the year. That, and the fact that Easter and Anzac Day long weekends got in the way, and suddenly, I was weeks without the little red rocket.

I picked the Fiesta up late one night at Ford’s 24-hour gatehouse, so I couldn’t even check whether the repairs had been done at all, let alone to what standard, but daylight the next day revealed all.

Basically, I have to say the repair work was worth the wait; it’s brand-new (which, I guess, we all expect these days anyway). The paint is a perfect match, and the panel gap and alignment is also spot on, with a perfect reflection in it as proof. The new alloy wheel finishes the job, and we’re all happy campers again.

The only slight hiccup was when I first started to drive home and noticed what felt like a small vibration through the car. My instinct was to blame the new alloy wheel being out of balance, but within a couple of kilometres, the little shudder had gone and hasn’t come back at any speed.

I’m thinking I was either on a slightly wobbly piece of tarmac – which it could have been, the road in question is heavily used by B-doubles which have a habit of destroying roads – or the car had been sitting so long at the panel shop that the tyres had developed little, temporary flat-spots which went away the first time the tyres got a bit of heat into them.

But everything else is just as I remembered it, which is to say, wonderful. This really is
a great little car – which we can’t wait to put some much-needed kays on – and if I missed it while it was away, I’m gonna need therapy when it goes back to Ford full-time.

Check out part 1 of the Ford Fiesta ST long term test.

Check out part 2 of the Ford Fiesta ST long term test