To address the robust speed control problem of the surface‐mounted permanent‐magnet synchronous motor (SPMSM) drive, a novel composite speed controller (CSC) is proposed, which consists of the modified super‐twisting sliding‐mode SC (STSM‐SC) and the extended state observer (ESO). Regarding the motion dynamics of the SPMSM drive, the unmodeled dynamics, endogenous, and exogenous disturbances are lumped together as the total disturbance. The ESO‐based feedforward compensation mechanism is used to deal with the total disturbance for the robustness improvement of the speed control achieved by the modified STSM‐SC‐based feedback regulation mechanism. On the basis of the field‐oriented control strategy, performance comparisons of the standard STSM‐SC, the ESO‐based standard STSM‐SC, the modified STSM‐SC, and the proposed CSC are carried out on a suitably developed experimental setup. The experimental results are presented to validate the superiority of the proposed CSC.