2019 Ford Fiesta vs Volkswagen Polo

What's the difference?

The new-generation Ford Fiesta ST is instantly more appealing than its predecessor - it is smarter inside, more efficient and more powerful, more enjoyable and better to look at. There is no denying it will appeal to more people, even if it does miss out on the crucial automatic transmission that so many buyers want. 

I just really hope Ford helps it along by making the five-door model available to local buyers, because it would be the best move - for the brand, and its potential customers. 

The Beats adds a certain stylish but restrained appeal to the already very smart Polo, but with the ‘Sound and Vision Package’ adding most of the good bits to other Polo variants like the branded 300w sound system for $1100 less, you have to ask yourself if you want to stand out from the crowd a little with the extra aesthetic touches.

As for the car part of the equation it’s a well-priced, practical and slick German small hatch, complete with one of the best multimedia offerings in the segment. However, it is let down slightly by an over-complicated drivetrain and a lacklustre ownership proposition.

It's less nosey than before - there's no doubt about that. The new Fiesta looks much better proportioned than its precursor, with an upright grille, sweeping lines through the body, and a "perfect" proportion between the metal and glass… according to the chief designer of the car. For what it's worth, I tend to agree - both in three- and five-door guise, this thing is a looker.

At the rear the tail-lights are now horizontal, rather than vertical, and that helps broaden the car visually, hunkering it down to the road. And in actual fact, the new-generation Fiesta ST is bigger in all the important directions than its predecessor: it is now 4068mm long (+93mm), 1735mm wide (+26mm) and the wheelbase is longer, too, now at 2493mm (+4mm). It's lower to the ground, as well: now 1469mm (-26mm).

Those dimensions are identical between three- and five-door models, and you can make your own mind up about which you prefer. But to me, there's a clear distinction between them: the three-door could be considered a bit of a selfish option - a car that's designed for the driver primarily, and that's undoubtedly a worthy attribute for a pint-size hot hatch; the five-door version is a more sensible option - it doesn't suffer enormous doors, and the packaging and practicality is pretty good for a little hatchback.

No matter the number of doors, the Fiesta ST gets clever door-ding protecting flip out barriers, the same as you see on a Skoda Kodiaq. It's a very nice piece of thoughtful design, especially for the three-door, because the doors themselves are massive for the size of the car.

The ST rolls on either 17- or 18-inch wheels, and it's unclear what we'll get (our money is on 18s). And it's still unclear if we'll get the three-door, the five-door, or maybe both. One would think that if Ford Australia was clever, it would try and maximise the options for buyers, because it's already excluding 90 per cent of the market by not offering an automatic transmission.

Subtlety is VW’s strong point and, as I mentioned earlier, the Beats has plenty of it. At least on the outside. Preserved is all the panache of the Polo’s design with its angular sides and nicely rounded edges. The 17-inch wheels on the Beats suit the car well, with the black highlights complimenting the angular black bits in the front grille.

Outside of the wheels, the Beats kit is limited to just a simple decal across the bonnet and roof, as well as a few logos strewn about. Thankfully (or, perhaps not for the Beats target audience…), you’d be hard-pressed to spot them unless you knew it was a Beats edition.

Inside is a different story. It strays from VW’s normally grey-on-black aesthetic, introducing off-whites, vibrant reds and even mild blues in the seat trim, dash insert and doors. Some will see this as a bit of fun. Many will see this as a bit too much.

Regardless, the 10.25-inch multimedia system - which is class leading in a car this size - looks amazing. It really classes up an already slick interior, and seamlessly blends in with the piano-black inner segment of the dash.

As with most VW products, the Polo’s switchgear is excellent. It’s the small things like the feel of the dials and buttons which elevate it above Japanese, Korean or even other European rivals. The placement of everything is also just about perfect ergonomically. If I have one complaint, it’s that the volume knob is a bit of a reach for the driver, who has volume controls on the steering wheel anyway.

For all the nice trim bits across the dash, the Polo does have some average feeling hard plastics in the doors and down the centre console. The analogue handbrake also seems at odds with the otherwise slick design, but that’s not unusual for a car in this class.

If there was a criticism that could be levelled at the old ST, it was that the interior felt like it hadn't moved on from its 2013 roots. The new one? Well, it's definitely up to date, even if it is also clearly based on an affordable hatchback and therefore has a few of less than luscious plastics.

There's the now typical tablet style media screen front and centre on the dashboard, an 8.0-inch touch-capacitive unit with the latest Ford Sync 3 interface, in-built sat nav, a crisp reversing camera display with active steering guidelines, and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto smartphone mirroring technology. It works well, and looks a helluva lot better than the existing car's 4.2-inch TFT with Sync 1.1.

The seats in the test vehicles were Recaro buckets, which may be a little tight at the base for broader-hipped individuals (yours truly included), but they offer terrific support and bracing in corners thanks to the huge body-hugging bolsters.

The seats also feature plenty of adjustment, including manual height adjust for the base, and tilt adjust as well. 

Of course there are the usual storage bits and bobs up front - a pair of cupholders between the front seats (with illumination), a smallish centre console bin, and a pair of slim door pockets. 

The back seat of the three-door and five-door models is suitable for getting you and your friends or children from one place to another, but it wouldn't be an enjoyable long-distance road trip car. And if you happen to go through some corners, you'll struggle to find anything to hang on to in the back (in a three-door, in particular) as there are no roof grab handles at all (three- or five-door). 

The back seat does have ISOFIX and child-seat anchor points, but it misses out on some basic inclusions: there is no fold-down centre armrest, no rear cupholders, and only a couple of small storage areas - whether the model you're in has five doors or three. There are no rear air vents, either, but it's a pretty small car.

The boot is a good size for this class, too, with 311 litres of cargo capacity - easily enough for a couple of weekend bags. There's a space-saver spare wheel under the floor - unless you get a car with the Bang & Olufsen stereo system, which uses that area for a subwoofer and instead includes a "tyre management kit". 

It’s not really Beats specific, but the Polo’s voluminous interior betrays its small dimensions. It’s easy to forget you're actually inside a small car, as the interior basically feels as spacious as a Golf did a generation ago.

It starts with the seating position. You can sit super close to the floor in the Polo. It’s a sporty seating arrangement and doesn’t detract from the car’s great visibility.

Front passengers also benefit from generous storage areas in the doors, smallish cupholders in the centre console and a small centre console box. Pride of place is the Qi wireless phone charger under the air conditioning controls, in a little bay which also houses two USB ports.

In the back, the magic dimensions of the Polo continue. Despite all the room afforded to forward passengers, rear passengers still have more than decent leg, arm and headroom. There are well-sized storage areas in the doors, as well as pockets on the back of the front seats, but there’s no air conditioning vents or drop-down arm rest.

In terms of interior room, only the Kia Rio or Hyundai Accent come close in this class, but the Korean hatches aren’t as nice to be in as the Polo.

Boot space is also a strong point. The Polo’s boot is so large it outplays competitors in a segment up.

VW posts the boot size at 351 litres which is decidedly larger than European competitors like the Renault Clio (300L) and Peugeot 208 (311L). It is put in its place by the Hyundai Accent with its gigantic 370L boot, however.

With the rear seats down space maxes out at 1125L, which is actually smaller than many competitors, plus the extra features of the Beats variant deletes the variable boot floor feature. 

While the ‘Beats’ brand has a bit of a reputation for being a little more expensive than it perhaps needs to be, the Polo Beats is, again, reasonably restrained. 

The Beats edition car costs $24,990 or $3000 more than the regular Polo 85TSI Comfortline on which it's based.

There are some rather good inclusions over the standard car though. The Beats edition scores VW’s amazing looking 10.25-inch gloss-finish multimedia touchscreen, LED tail and fog lights, ‘Active Info Display’ digital instrument cluster, 16-inch ‘Torsby’ design alloy wheels, built-in sat-nav and a ‘Qi’ wireless phone charging bay.

Not bad tech additions. Of course, being a brand crossover, there is a red and white sticker pinstripe across the bonnet and roof, as well as beats logos located on the outside of the B-pillar, on the inside of the A-pillar, on the door sills, and on the seats.

The subtle exterior editions are at odds with the bespoke interior trim which is only one step away from a cherries and cream overload. Not everyone will love it.

Those features add to the standard 85TSI Comfortline’s leather-bound shift-lever and steering wheel, heated, folding and adjustable wing-mirrors with LED indicators, ‘comfort’ seats, auto dusk sensing headlights as well as DAB+ digital radio and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity.

A let down to the standard spec are the halogen headlight clusters. LEDs or at least xenons would be welcome.

The Beats’ 300-watt sound system is certainly better than the kind of standard sound systems in most cars. It has a nice depth to it, especially in the base area, and the clarity is excellent even at high volumes. I couldn’t get it to become too trebly or distort either – common problems with cheap car audio. 

It is seriously loud though - even at half the available volume - so unless you’re planning on hosting a bush doof or something, I’m not sure how you can even use most of the audio system’s potential…

Not a bad bit of kit for $25k, really.

But wait. There’s a slight catch. If you’re not in love with all the ‘Beats’ bits (understandable), you can option the 85TSI Comfortline or GTI to have the upgraded media screen, Beats audio system, sat nav and wireless charging kit as part of the ‘Sound and Vision Package’ for $1900. 

If you’re like me and are capable of rudimentary math, you’ll have figured out this means the Beats styling touches and bespoke alloys are setting you back $1100. Food for thought.

The 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine matches the power output of the existing model (well, the old model on overboost, anyway), with 147kW at 6000rpm. That's pretty amazing horsepower from a triple.

The torque figure needn't be sneezed at, either with 290Nm from 1600-4000rpm. That's 50Nm more than the old car (or 20Nm more if you're talking the overboost numbers), across a slightly narrower rev range. But the tractability of the engine is superb. Read the driving section below for more on that.

Oh, and you might want to know the 0-100km/h time, too? It's 6.5 seconds, which is 0.4sec quicker than the claimed 0-100 time of the existing car, and that's despite the fact it's quite a bit heavier than the existing model: three-door for three-door, the weight is up 90kg (now 1262kg), and the five-door is 21kg. Top speed is claimed at 232km/h.

The Beats shares the same 85kW/200Nm 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbocharged engine with the 85TSI Comfortline. 

Power-wise it is about on par with the competition, most of which hover around the 80-90kW mark, and our car was the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic version (there is also a six-speed manual available).

It doesn’t feel as willing as many of its competitors however, possibly due to a decent amount of turbo-lag. Once it gets up and going, however, it’s quick in a straight line.

All Polos are also fitted with a stop-start system which turns off too quickly and is slow to start up again. I almost always turned it off as I found it at best irritating, and at worst dangerous at some intersections where a few extra seconds make all the distance.

The new Fiesta ST is claimed to use 6.0 litres per 100 kilometres, which is high for a three-cylinder engine… well, if it were an economy-tuned three-cylinder. But it's still pretty good for a hot hatch.

And the 1.5-litre is the first three-cylinder from Ford to offer a cylinder deactivation system, which can make the engine run on two cylinders only under low loads. You can hear it and feel it when that happens, but it's apparently good to help you save about 6 per cent on fuel consumption when it does. 

Over a very - shall we say - spirited drive in the mountains behind Nice in France, I saw just over 10 litres per hundred indicated on the dashboard.

Volkswagen claims all those complicated engine parts help the Polo achieve a 4.9L/100km fuel usage number for combined city and highway driving. 

Over my week of switching off the stop-start system and putting my foot to the floor in some scenarios to get the Polo up to speed I scored 7.0L/100km. I honestly believe with more time to get used to the nuances of the engine and transmission that number could be reduced, but for the week it was a solid miss for me.

The Polo asks for a minimum of 95RON unleaded.

I love the character and sound of three-cylinder cars - I own two of them, a Mini Cooper and a Volkswagen up! - and anyone who may have thought that the charm of the Fiesta ST could be damaged by the swap from four to three cylinders, you needn't fear. It's more loveable than ever.

The way the engine sears with power and punches its torque out is phenomenal, a true testament to Ford's engineers that have made something thoroughly entertaining with the 2019 Fiesta ST.

Of course it still has a six-speed manual - it's a Euro hot hatch, after all - but still no automatic, dual-clutch or otherwise. It's a good little gearbox, with decent shift feel and a light but usable clutch. The throw is a little long, and first gear is pretty short, but it's easy enough to pedal through the gears.

There is a launch control system that'll hold revs for you, allowing you to dump the clutch and take off very speedily. And if you're worried about just how quick you're going, there's a digital speedometer in the middle of the manual gauge cluster. It's a shame the new Fiesta doesn't get the same 12.0-inch digital driver display that the Mustang has - it would have lifted the interior ambience even more.

It also lacks a rev matching system - aaaaaand you get that sporty tech in the a new-generation base model manual Corolla. 

The traction on offer is immense - as you may expect, the vehicle we tested with the Quaife limited-slip differential clambered out of tight corners tremendously, where the car with the open diff was more of a handful in the twisty stuff. 

There's also a torque vectoring (by braking) system, which will grab the brake of the inside front wheel to enhance the turn response, and if you want to, you can provoke the back end to step around on itself to a degree - if you opt for the Sport ESC setting and Sport drive mode and find a series of hairpins, the Fiesta ST will cock its back leg more than an eager dog on a morning walk. 

We didn't sample Race Mode, because we weren't at a race track. Safety first… and as it was, we had to dodge public holiday cyclists by the hundred, and speeding Renault Kangoo drivers that seemed to have forgotten what side of the road they were supposed to be on.

There is no Individual or Custom mode, so you can't pick and choose settings you might want to. 

There is some torque-steer to contend with, but rather than being annoying, it's actually pretty endearing - and the ultra-quick steering (a 12:1 ratio electric steering set-up, the quickest ever from Ford) makes you feel more dialled-in to the drive experience. 

While some of my fellow Aussie journos had questions over a slight fuzziness to the steering on-centre, I had no such complaints with the way this car tipped into a tight bend or changed direction part way through.

Another dialled-in element is the suspension - the front end is a MacPherson strut set-up with twin-tube dampers and a thick (22.5mm) anti-roll bar, the rear a torsion beam arrangement that is stiffer than anything else to have come from Ford Performance. 

The most surprising bit is how nicely the Fiesta ST rides. It is undeniably more comfortable than the existing model (I got a lift in one just two days before the launch drive), and while our test loop wasn't the typical rat-run through the back streets of Sydney or Melbourne, it promises to be well sorted when it comes to bump and body control. 

It’s a mixed bag with the Polo. I’ll start with the good. 

The suspension is incredible. It rides low and sporty, but it’s never harsh. On multiple occasions I found myself cringing when spotting a pothole too late, but then coming out the other side pleasantly surprised that it barely had an affect in the cabin. It rides super flat and sticky in the corners as well. You can really feel the wheels all the way at the edge of the chassis.

Then, there’s the steering. It’s light, but purposeful. It could use perhaps a little more feedback, feeling slightly over (electrically) assisted, but the small three-spoke wheel gives it a fun, and genuinely sporty feel.

Sadly, the great feel of the car is let down by the drivetrain. The 1.0-litre turbo is prone to lag, forcing you to wait a second or two before the peak torque arrives at 2000rpm. It’s especially irritating having to wait a full second for power when you’re trying to overtake or slip into a gap in traffic at a T-junction.

The delay encourages you to push your foot further into the floor, which results in a sudden shunt of power when all the moving parts figure out how to work together. 

Most competitors are much smoother when it comes to taking off from a standstill. The stop-start system adds even more of a delay to this equation. I honestly tried to embrace it but ended up just turning it off at the first opportunity.

Once up and running though, the seven-speed 'DSG' dual-clutch auto is a slick-shifter, gear changes are imperceptible.

Ironically for a ‘Beats’ model, the Polo is incredibly quiet. Aside from a distant gruff rumble under heavy acceleration, you’d be hard pressed to pick the three-cylinder’s engine note out from background noise. The cabin is well insulated as well, helping you make the most of that audio system.

The drive experience all feels very refined, I just wish it were a little more responsive to inputs…

The latest Polo carries a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating as of Feburary 2018 thanks to the presence of auto emergency braking (AEB).

The Polo’s AEB system works at city speeds of up to 30km/h and can monitor for pedestrians as well as vehicles.

In terms of active safety, that’s about it for standard fittings in the Polo. However, the $1400 ‘Driver Assistance Package’ adds adaptive cruise control with 'stop & go' function, Blind Spot Monitoring (BSM), Rear Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA) rear city-speed AEB, auto park assist, front & rear parking sensors and something called the ‘proactive occupant protection system’. 

Sounds like it’s well worth the extra cash to me. Our car did not have the pack fitted.

In terms of the regular refinements, the Polo has six airbags, the regular electronic stability tech and the addition of Hill Start Assist.

It's a much more promising ownership program than it once was, with Ford having recently introduced a five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty across all of its models (purchased from May 1, 2018). Previously the brand backed its cars with a three-year/100,000km plan.

There will be capped-price servicing under Ford's 'Service Price Promise' plan, which will span the life of the car, as it does with all Ford models. The previous plan required servicing every 12 months/15,000km and it is expected that will be the same for the new model.

Ford will also update the Sync 3 sat nav maps for seven years from the date of purchase if you maintain your car with them throughout.

Volkswagen has recently updated its capped price servicing plans which are sold up-front as a package to new buyers. 

A three-year servicing plan for the Polo is $1152 ($384 a year) while a five-year plan is $2164 ($432.80 a year). Still expensive.

The company also isn’t budging on its outdated three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty. Almost all its competitors and even fully-owned subsidiary, Skoda, have moved to five-year/unlimited kilometre cover.

If it’s a long warranty you’re after the Kia Rio’s seven-year/unlimited kilometre one is the bar to beat in this segment.