Ford Fiesta ST to return as an electric hot hatch

The Ford Fiesta ST looks set to make a comeback as the Blue Oval brand tries to regain lost ground in Europe.

Speaking about the upcoming electric Fiesta, Christian Weingartner, general manager of passenger cars for Ford of Europe, told AutoExpress: "To be credible and authentic, there needs to be some kind of performance series of our vehicles; that's what we’ve got to have."

Whether it will wear the ST badge used in the fifth, sixth and seventh generations, the earlier XR2 nameplate, or something else entirely remains unknown, with Mr Weingartner saying:”We have not made any decisions on naming, but it's very clear that if you talk ‘race to to road’, that we want to have really capable vehicles."

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The new Fiesta is expected to launch in 2028. As part of an agreement signed late last year, it will be based on the electric-only Renault 5 E-Tech and built by Renault at its factory in Douai, outside of Lille, France.

The standard Renault 5 E-Tech range tops out with a 110kW/245Nm motor driving the front wheels. There are, however, hotted-up variants sold as the Alpine 290 featuring pumped-up wheel-arches, amped-up styling, and significantly more power.

In lower-spec variants, the Alpine 290 has a 132kW motor and can complete the 0-100km/h dash in a claimed 7.4 seconds, while the top-of-the-range model has a 162kW motor and can hit the century mark in a claimed 6.4 seconds.

The design and chassis tune of the new Fiesta will be done by Ford, which is expected to embrace the company's 'rally-bred' heritage, but we don't know how far it will stray from the Renault base. In an interview with Autocar, Ford of Europe chief Jim Baumbick noted "the things that [you] see, touch and feel [are those that] need to be different to make it authentically a Ford".

In the early 2020s, Ford of Europe decided to stop being a full-line vehicle manufacturer, shifting focus to its successful van range, SUVs and the Mustang.

European production of the Mondeo wrapped up in 2022, with the related S-Max and Galaxy people movers following suit a year later. 

The Ford Fiesta was discontinued in 2023, when the Cologne factory was retooled to produce the Explorer and Capri electric vehicles based on the Volkswagen MEB architecture. Last year the final Focus rolled down the line in Saarlouis, Germany.

It's unclear if the new Fiesta andthe other Renault-based Ford models will be sold outside of Europe.

For its seventh and to-date last generation, Ford Australia only offered the Fiesta locally in the ST trim, with motivation supplied by a 147kW 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine.

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