The party may be winding down for the Fiesta ST in the U.S., but you wouldn’t know it with used editions like today’s ’14 still shindigging it. We’ll have to see if paying this one’s price would make its buyer a raving lunatic.

With fewer and fewer people smoking these days, much less smoking stogies, I wonder just how relevant the phrase ‘close but no cigar’ will be to future generations?

That’s not a worry at present since yesterday’s took home a ‘close and a cigar’ 57-percent Nice Price win for its $9,500 price. That victory may have been tainted by some grumbling over the details, but in the end the vote proved close enough for government work. Hmmm, for some reason I think that idiom may still have legs.

You know what’s not going to be around all that much longer? Ford cars, that’s what. Instead of Fiestas, Foci, Fusions and Taur-walruses, U.S. buyers will be offered Edges, Escapes, and Eco-chambers. The company will still be selling the money-making Mustang, but its sorta-tradition of dropping F-bombs for its car names seems to be going on hiatus.

One of the more tragic casualties of Ford’s car culling agenda is the Fiesta ST, a hot hatch that’s small on size, but big on heart.

Here we have a , hailing from the model’s first year of operations. It rocks enviably named Race Red paint which is set over a grey and black interior and be-darkened alloys. Aside from some window tint, those plasti-dipped wheels, and mudflaps at the corners, it’s all down to the bone stock.

What’s stock? Well, in the ST’s case it’s a 1.6-litre DOHC four that, with the aid of an intercooled turbo, makes hay to the tune of 197-horsepower and 177 lb-ft of torque. That’s a lot of ponies to feed through the front wheels, and keeping them inline is the standard issue six-speed manual with Ford’s Enhanced Torque Vectoring Control (eTVC) to aid turn-in during aggressive driving.

This ST has another fancy pants feature, that being a pair of real-deal Recaro thrones in the cabin. This was a two-grand option when new and honestly, having driven ST’s without them, the highly bolstered seats are a must have if your interests lie in giving that eTVC a workout.

The seats look as-new and are thankfully grey and black rather than the retina-searing orange and black that was an alternate choice. The rest of the cabin is clean, which is to be expected on a car that has only 39,900 miles and which is described as having been properly maintained.

The Recaros make the hard plastic surfaces in the rest of the interior look even cheaper than they are, but these cars are typically screwed together reasonably well. You might want to avoid putting friends in the backseat however. The upholstery back there matches that up front, the same can’t be said for the available space or any sort of bolstering. And yes, Ford did intend for this to be a five seater. Don’t ever attempt to prove that point.

Moving outside, things are equally tidy and there’s no supermini hot hatch sold in the U.S. that looks quite as aggressive as does the Fiesta ST. A lot of the model-unique bodywork echos that of the similarly badged Focus, just here in 7/8s scale.

Recent attention has been paid to the brake pads and the registration was renewed just three months back, making this just a hand shake and a smog test away from a new owner.

Will Ford’s cars become covetable once the company finally goes full-crossover? No, they won’t. There will be plenty of other car companies building actual cars and eventually we’ll talk about products like this Fiesta with phrases like ‘you know what you never see anymore...?’

Before that eventuality occurs however, we have this lightly used and seemingly fun Fiesta to consider. In the right-here, right now, the asking price for this ST is $12,900. That’s less than half what the car went for new, and it’s optioned with all the right stuff.

What’s your take on this hot Fiesta and that $12,900 price? Is that low enough to get you to consider digging into your pocket? Or, for that much would you hold out for a Focus?

You decide!

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