Ford Fiesta ST (Mk7)
Why 9.0: The cheapest real driver's car of its decade — bought with own money, driven daily, worth nothing, worth everything. The purest ownership profile in the index after the Caterham.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
Ford routed a sound symposer from the inlet tract into the bulkhead, so the 1.6 EcoBoost's induction arrives amplified and on cue, and it works. But that is a tube feeding you intake noise rather than an exhaust note, over an ordinary turbo four stopping at 6,500.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 6,500 rpm redline · rated 5.0 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €17k (2015) → €10k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two outboard LATCH positions in the rear bench; it's a small hatchback back seat, so bulkier convertible seats fit tight.
No LATCH hardware in the front seat of the US-spec Fiesta.
FMVSS 225 (US federal LATCH mandate, lower anchors + top tether required from Sept 2002) (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
Nobody has ever tried to speculate on a Fiesta ST; there is no six-figure auction fantasy to chase, so the entire ownership population is just people who wanted a cheap car that is fun on the way to work, and the value chart confirms it, a steady slide toward four figures that never once interrupts itself with a flipper spike. That collapse is exactly what makes the Bargain Window real for the next buyer, who inherits a genuinely sorted chassis for beer money and puts the same kind of miles on it the first owner did. Four badges on one car is a lot, but this is what zero pretension looks like on paper.