Apparently the people in the evo office thought the same when they ordered our new long-termer, speccing the full up-and-over tramlines, along with the more discreet side-stripes along the sills. Trouble is, they were wrong. The stripes might seem like a brilliant idea in magazine pictures but do you honestly want them gummed to your car every single day? Do you want to turn up to family gatherings, friends' weddings and pleasant country hotels with a pair of broad blue lout-lines stretching the length of your car? No, not really. So I had them peeled off. Sorry. The side-stripes, on the other hand, could stay. MkII Escort RS2000s had side-stripes, and so for that matter did some MkI Golf GTIs. Ergo, they're much more my thing.

However, the stripes I would like are the subtle ones that run down the optional lacquered interior trim around the centre console. But you can't have that on this car because it's incompatible with our car's extra-cost sat-nav unit. Two problems here: firstly, that shiny finish stereo surround would really lift an otherwise dull interior in a way that the alloy pedals and token steering wheel trim can't. Secondly, that sat-nav is a really bog-basic clunker with a tiny screen that, one day last week on the way to West London, forgot to tell me to turn off the M25 onto the M40. Plus, where the standard ST stereo has a lovely six-CD changer built into the dash, with the nav unit you get just a single disc capacity and if you want digital guidance you can't use even that because the map disc goes in the same slot. Rubbish. And, at ΂£1000, expensive rubbish too.

Still, you don't read this magazine because you're a keen aesthete or avid sat-nav performance enthusiast. What we're interested in here is how the Fiesta stacks up as a medium-strength hot hatch. When John Barker first tested it abroad, he came away mildly disappointed and slapped a three-star rating at the end of his test. Then Richard Meaden group tested an ST against a handful of rivals and, with some reservations, awarded it an extra half- star. Based on this growing star-count, I reckon that exponentially, by the time our year with the ST is through, it'll be a record-breaking nine-star car. Take that, Pagani Zonda. Perhaps not. But I know from past experience of more modest Fiestas that they're real growers. So this is going to be an interesting 12 months. Were we hasty to judge the Fiesta ST a bit lacklustre? Is it one of those cars that's blessed with real depth of ability that only emerges after lengthy exposure?

You'll have to come back later for the answer to that one, but in the meantime there's plenty of immediately likeable stuff to get on with. The lovely, chunky gearchange for example, and the surprisingly gentle ride, which I reckon is often the marker of a properly, intelligently sorted chassis, even in a car that's trying to be sporty. Mind you, there is a sense that, when it comes to sportiness, the Fiesta isn't trying hard enough, largely because of the engine. Our ST arrived with just 33 miles on the clock and I took it easy for another 967 miles until it was well bedded-in. As 1000 rolled over on the odo, for the first time I kept my foot down over 4000rpm, anticipating tapping the more explosive end of the power-band. And... there wasn't one. But then, the deeper into a four-figure mileage we go, the faster the Fiesta seems to get as the motor loosens up and releases more of the good stuff.

This seems to be the ST's style. Where yer Clio 182, or even Civic Type-R, has that classic hot hatch bursting-apart-at-the-seams feeling of a big engine stuffed into a shopping-car shell, the Fiesta is more subtle, more mannered. In '80s GTI terms, it's more mkII Golf than Peugeot 205. And that, I suspect, might be a benefit in the long run. When you want to potter, to use the sensible hatchbackness of the car, this Fiesta isn't going to get on your nerves. And when you want to give it a spanking, I'm hoping the ever-more-grunty engine and cling-on handling will increasingly make me grin like a loon.

If the ST can pull that off, there's at least another half star waiting for it. Watch this space.