WE all aspire to the best and for Ford Fiesta enthusiasts the best is the Fiesta ST.

But the price of the car, not to mention insuring it can put this pocket rocket out of reach of many, particularly young drivers.

But if you want the look without the grunt there is a great alternative - the Fiesta ST-Line.

This is a model which has the racy image of the ST but with a relatively diminutive 1.0-litre, three-cylinder engine under the bonnet so is affordable and insurable.

Having said that at £21,160 this is no budget hatchback but you do get more bang for your buck on a car which - thanks to its ST body styling kit - has more eye catching curves than Naomi Campbell.

And now the ST-Line is available as a mild hybrid, ensuring it's more environmentally friendly as well as being easier on your pocket because you get better fuel consumption, and all without the need to plug anything in.

Unlike the 200bhp full ST model you might have to wind the revs up to get your desired performance out of the 1.0-litre engine but when you do this car delivers with a respectable 0-62 miles per hour acceleration time of 9.4 seconds.

And the sports suspension adds even more sparkle to this car for enthusiastic motorists by ensuring that there's good grip and excellent cornering with little body roll.

For normal town and city traffic the ST-Line is equally ideal. Quiet, light to drive, easy to handle and manoeuvre and simple to reverse park thanks to a rear view camera and parking sensors.

In fact when you get behind the wheel it's not hard to appreciate why the Fiesta continually tops the best seller list in the UK. I would like to have seen a slightly smoother gearbox action, however, but it's a small criticism in this case.

The ST-Line comes with an impressive range of features including self parking, three selectable driving modes - eco, normal and sport - a heated windscreen, a large body-coloured rear spoiler and sports pedals.

Safety features including everything from blind spot warning lights in the external mirrors to lane keeping assist. And thankfully Ford allows you to leave the latter switched on or off, unlike a lot of manufacturers whose system always defaults to on every time you start the car and not everyone wants that.

The ST-Line has a stylish dashboard with piano black inserts and an 8-inch touch screen for the satellite navigation as well as the numerous onboard features.

And it's a system which is impressively intuitive so you don't have to take your eyes off the road for more than a second or two to use it.