Ford is ceding to pressure from the hot hatch likes of VW's Golf R and Mercedes A45 AMG and will equip its much-anticipated new Focus RS with four-wheel-drive. The move was seen as necessary to contain the massive 323hp grunt of the car's 2.3-litre Ecobost turbo engine, especially given the criticisms levelled at the 250hp fornt-drive Focus ST. That car suffers from a lot of torque-steer (when the engine's power tugs at the steering) so the more powerful RS would have probably been close to undriveable without all-wheel-drive.
Revealed today in Cologne, the RS’s four-wheel-drive system also features torque vectoring - the ability to channel power to the wheel or wheels best able to use it, not just from front to rear but from side to side as well. That should make the car staggeringly agile and grippy. Upt o 70 per cent of the engine’s pwer can be channeled to the rear wheels, which explains the big powerslides we saw in Ford’s recent teaser video of the prototype RS on a race track. Ford claims that the lateral acceleration figure for the car, a measure of how hard it grips the road, exceeds 1g, which is getting on for race-car territory.
The 2.3-litre engine is related to the unit found in the new Mustang muscle car, but gets a bigger turbo, bigger intercooler and some other modifications to gain around 10hp over the 'Stang. The 01-00kmh time should be under 5secs yet Ford claims that Co2 emissions are a surprisingly reasonbale 180g/km.
Style-wise, the RS looks a little quieter than previous generations, certianly more reserved than the wide-body, bewinged MkII Focus RS. Ford’s wish to sell the car in all global markets is behind this toning down, as is the need to use the standard five-door Focus bodyshell. The RS can be dinstinguished from the ST thoguh by a deeper, more aggressive front bumper, larger rear wing with endplates and a big diffuser-style rear bumper with trumpet exhausts. Ford claims to have been inspired by the understated style of the Audi S3 in designing the RS.
Standard equipment will includes 19” allo y wheels, massive Brembo brakes and sat-nav. Options will include more aggressive hard-shell Recaro bucket seats and semi-slick tyres for taking the Focus RS on track. It’s likely that Ford will eventually offer an even more powerful variant soon the second generation Focus RS was eventually offered in 350hp RS500 form...
There’s also a good chance that it won’t be the only RS model. Ford has ben bouyed by the reaction to its recent hot car launches - the Focus and Fiesta ST, the F150 Raptor pickup and the recent launch of the mid-engined GT supercar. All of which means that the Blue Oval is apparently working on a boiling-hot Fiesta RS to sit alongside the Focus.
