Throughout college, I owned what I consider to be one of the greatest hot hatches of our time: A 2014 Ford Fiesta ST. The rowdy little five-door was a flawless steed, hauling me to and from my parents’ house every semester, but also helping me break into the automotive space through autocross, track day, and ice racing events. I bought the car new and put nearly 50,000 trouble-free miles on the clock before finally getting rid of it.
As an enthusiast car, the Fiesta ST is near flawless. It had a turbocharged four-cylinder making nearly 200 horsepower—plenty for something that weighs just 2,720 pounds. The only transmission available was a slick-shifting six-speed manual. Mine even had the optional Recaro bucket seats, which are still among the most aggressively bolstered I’ve ever used in any road car, ever.
While I can sing the praises of the Fiesta ST for days, it does have one glaring flaw: The gas pedal. On first glance, you might not understand what I’m talking about. It’s just a metal-capped pedal, after all. The spacing between all three pedals is pretty good, and there are even rubber grips to keep your shoes from slipping off. This issue is something you’ll only really pick up on if you drive the car hard.
So What’s The Problem?
The drawback lies with the physical positioning of the throttle pedal within the footwell. For some reason, the pedal is placed far closer—maybe about an inch or two—to the carpet than the brake pedal. It’s not really an issue when you’re just driving and shifting normally, and many owners may never notice it at all. But I noticed it immediately, and it drove me crazy throughout my entire three-year ownership.
Why’s this a problem, you may ask? Before I dive any further, I have to explain the art of heel-toe shifting. Heel-toe shifting, also known simply as heel-toeing or rev-match downshifting, is the act of matching your engine’s RPM to wheel speed while slowing your car down. This is done by leaning one part of your foot—typically your heel or the right side of your foot—to the throttle to “blip” the engine while the clutch is depressed, slotting the shifter into a lower gear simultaneously. Here’s a quick tutorial video that depicts heel-toeing nicely:
Heel-toe downshifting smooths out the downshifting process on deceleration, eliminating the jerk you’d feel if you simply put the car into a lower gear and let out the clutch pedal. That sort of jerking motion upsets the car’s balance, so heel-toeing is important if you’re on the edge of grip coming into a corner—it’s an essential practice if your goal is to extract the most performance from a car. Heel-toeing is also far less harsh on your clutch disc than if you didn’t rev-match.
Back to the Fiesta. The reason I dislike the gas pedal in the little Ford is due to its height relative to the brake pedal. Because it was so much lower, I found it impossible to perform a proper heel-toe shift. The only way to get my foot on the gas and the brake at the same time was to really push down on the brake pedal. But in most real-world scenarios, I never needed that much brake pressure. So I stopped trying.
I Wasn’t The Only One
Source: Brian Silvestro
For a while, I chalked up my inability to heel-toe in the Fiesta to user error. But when I started driving other cars—Miatas, BMWs, Porsches—I realized I could heel-toe just fine. So it had to be the car. I even drove a newer 2016 model-year Fiesta ST a couple of years ago to confirm my suspicions, and I had the same problem.
A wave of validation washed over me when I recently looked for complaints online about the Fiesta’s pedal placement. In a post to the fiestast.net forum, several users mention struggles with regard to heel-toeing in the car. Here’s a quote from one user, EBinVA, mentioning some very similar complaints:
To me heel/toe is a pain in the ass in this car. I hate the way the gas and brake pedal are positioned, the brake pedal is just barely far enough to the side to make it nearly impossible to use the inside/outside balls of my feet without huge fear of slipping off of one of the pedals and the brake pedal is raised just barely too far for me to rotate my heel over and blip the throttle.
Yes! Exactly! There’s more, too, from a user named Smatty in that same thread:
I’m no expert at driving MT but the way I have to position my foot in order to do it in the ST doesn’t even feel very comfortable. If I were needing to do it in a situation where quickness and accuracy was required there is no way I could do it with any amount of certainty or precision. I swear that many reviews I read of the car mentioned its excellent pedal placement for heel toe shifting so maybe I am doing it all wrong…
A fiestaforum.com post titled “Heel-Toe in the FiST??” from 2018 by the user Blackout had a complaint that seems to match mine:
The brakes are way too touchy to press down far enough to where my foot can actually reach the gas.
In that same thread, one user notes that a pedal spacer is “pretty much a must” for Fiesta STs. As it turns out, the pedal placement issue was bothering enough owners that some real aftermarket solutions have appeared in the time since I’ve sold mine. In the case of the Fiesta, the fix is to install a piece of specially shaped metal or plastic behind the throttle pedal mount, effectively bringing it closer in line with the brake pedal. Why didn’t I think of that?
As Always, The Aftermarket Has a Solution
There are a few different types of pedal spacers out there for the FiST. The cheapest is a simple plastic spacer out of Lithuania on Etsy that bolts between the firewall and the throttle pedal assembly, all yours for just $15.99. Another version, also plastic and on Etsy, uses a similar spacer but adds an extension piece for the pedal pad itself (above), affixed to the stock pedal via a couple of screws. More real estate is always good when it comes to heel-toeing, so if you have small feet, this can help. It costs $39.00.
The version I’d choose, though, is a bit more substantial. Like the other spacers, this one mounts to the firewall, acting as an extension for the pedal assembly. But it’s made of metal and, more importantly, it has rectangular slots with rounded ends for mounting the assembly, which means it’s adjustable left to right. That’s huge for dialing in exactly where you want your pedal to be in relation to the brake. This install video from the Project Radium YouTube channel shows exactly how it all fits together:
Being a sturdier piece made from metal, this spacer is a bit more expensive, at $47.00. It’s also made in America, by a Maryland-based company called GarageLine, which makes a bunch of aftermarket parts for a slew of different foreign and domestic cars.
Though I haven’t tried a Fiesta ST with the pedal spacer mod, I have a strong feeling it’d renew my interest in the little hot hatch. While writing this, I couldn’t help but glance at Facebook Marketplace to see how much a used FiST costs. And damn, these cars are cheap now! I had no idea I could pick up a clean one for under six grand. I have been looking for a new “fun” car to add to my stable…
Top photo: Brian Silvestro and Project Radium on YouTube
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
Once I noticed how high the brake pedal was relative to the throttle in my 5th Gen CR-V I couldn’t forgive any of its lame characteristics. It was a test drive in a BMW that tipped me off. Forget heel and toe, you need a step ladder to get to the brakes from the gas in the Honda. I read that was to prevent drivers from stepping on the wrong pedal. It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice, but once I did, that car was dead to me.
I saw the picture of the gas pedal in the thumbnail and instantly knew what this article was going to be about. It’s my one major complaint about the driving experience of this car. I’ve been meaning to pick up a pedal spacer for a while now but for whatever reason I keep putting it off
I LOVE these FiSts! I’ve driven these and most of their natural competition (Mini Cooper S (auto and manual), Fiat 500 Abarth, first gen Mazdaspeed3, Volvo C30 T5 6MT, Focus ST) and this was my favorite. Idk how they crammed that much character in such a small fun car. I tried to buy one when new, but couldn’t swing the payments and ended up in a Honda Fit 6MT with an awesome lease deal. The worst part of all of this is that by the time I had the funds for one, it no longer fit my lifestyle. I still adore these and despite the high praise from auto journalists, I still think these are underrated.
Get the Recaros.
Assumed it was going to be about a dead pedal so your carpet doesn’t get nasty. This and a short throw are the only thing I ever did to mine.
Found This Awesome Dead Pedal : r/FiestaST
Also, I’ve never heel toed in my life and let the clutch do the braking. No issues on the OEM clutch 108k later and I burnt this baby on same gnarly Seattle hill starts.
Had a ’14 Mustang with a similar situation. The clutch pedal was about an inch further into the footwell than the other pedals. A pedal cap fixed it and never had an issue with it.
I am a FiST owner and have the same problem, so I gave up trying (all my previous manual transmission vehicles were basic transportation, so heel-toe wasn’t really useful).
Just let me say I adore mine. I’ve had seven trouble-free years of hooning and more giggles than I can count. It’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys and I compare it to having a devil on both shoulders saying, “do it… do it… c’mon…”
I gave serious thought to purchasing a FiST when they came out, but I didn’t really like the clutch pedal feel. I always thought it was a little too soft.
But if I can get one of these for cheap, I’d certainly learn to live with it!
I owned a FiST briefly before it was totaled while parked on the street during dinner one winter’s evening. It was much more fun than the GTI and Golf R I owned after.
I didn’t own it long enough to figure out if the heel-toe issue was me or the car. Now at least I can pretend it was the car.
I had the same problem with my MK7 GTI, the height of the gas pedal made comfortable heel toe downshifts very difficult. I found a very similar spacer, first modification I made to the car, made a huge difference.
Cool that the aftermarket came to the rescue.
My ’85 Ford LTD was originally automatic trans but then manual swapped with the clutch and brake pedals from a Mustang. I noticed I couldn’t heel-toe easily and it wasn’t until years later that I learned that manual trans Mustangs had a wider gas pedal for this reason. So I swapped in the Mustang pedals and now I can heel-toe!
I also added a Mustang SVO dead pedal and a Maximum Motorsports kit that changes the height of the clutch pedal so it matches the brakes. I’ve probably put more effort into the pedals on my car than most.
Don’t tell me how cheap these are now. I looked at these, FoST’s, and MazdaSpeed3’s when I was searching for a manual hatchback but ended up buying a regular Mazda3 hatch with a stick.
It’s an excellent car and much more practical for what I use it for, but it’s no hot hatch…
I sold my ’08 MS3 and bought a ’15 3 2.0L. Having a cool high performance car as a daily driver was a waste and the MS3’s fuel economy ain’t great.
I have the ’14 2.0, so glad to hear I made the right choice.
Such is the life of a “practical” enthusiast, I suppose. I like cars, but I don’t want to pay the price of discomfort, headaches, and needless cost just to have something “cool”.
I have cool cars too but have no problem with my commuter car being boring. At least it’s a 6-speed.
I regret to inform you that there are countless examples under $10k and they all look very clean…
That is a standard Fiesta problem not just the ST.
My 2014 Fiesta SE 1.6 5 speed has the same pedal arrangement.
I’m a fat footed right left sole rocker and I’ve become used to the layout.
A spacer should of come to my attention sooner.
At one point early on I even considered a heat and beat solution, but never pursued it.
And a Focus problem too – my ’10 has the same issue.
I daily mine and did the same fix. More of an outside-foot-inside-foot movement than heel-toe.
100k miles on my mine and this issue doesn’t bother me as much as the HVAC door flapping noise in the dash on startup/shutdown. Can confirm the seats are fantastic!
BRO. My driver’s side blend door just started doing this. Replaced the passenger’s side last year. I feel like this is going to be an annual event.
Is it hard to replace? Mine’s been doing it for a loooong time and i just deal with it.
Passenger side is super easy – just take the glovebox off. The driver’s side is a PITA because it’s tucked way up by the head unit. Still DIY but it requires a tiny rachet (or tiny hands).
Tell me more, like a link to the procedure? Mine just started doing this and I think it’s the driver’s side one since it sounds like its up under behind the head unit. First problem I’ve had with the car in seven years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBs6CJoZmJk
You’ll recognize the clicking sound and the look on his face when he hears it.
Thanks!
The Focus ST was the same. I don’t use my heel, though, I use both sides of my feet to rev match under braking, so before I got a spacer, I got used to the positioning.