The latest Ford Focus will leave front-drive rivals for dust, reports motoring editor Alastair Sloane
KEY POINTS:
The new Ford Focus RS hatchback will be the most powerful front-drive car on the road when it lands in New Zealand later next year.
It's also the most powerful road-going Ford RS model ever. It is the second Focus to carry the Rallye Sport badge
in a go-fast Ford story that began in Germany in the late 1960s but came to life with the launch in 1970 of the Escort RS1600.
Ford NZ has been deluged with inquiries about the new three-door since it broke cover at the British International Motor Show a couple of months ago.
Similarly, the car's appearance at the Paris show last week - its first public outing on mainland Europe - created more interest. It goes into production early next year.
"We have had people wanting to buy it from the start," said Ford NZ managing director Richard Matheson. "We will bring it in, but in limited numbers."
The car's turbocharged 2.5-litre in-line engine develops around 222kW, or a touch this side of 300bhp, and 410Nm of torque.
Those numbers are pretty much identical to the output from proven road rockets, the Subaru WRX STi and the Mitsubishi Evolution X.
But the Japanese rivals distribute power to all four wheels - the Focus RS sends it to the front wheels only, via a six-speed manual gearbox.
The only other front-drive performance hatchback on the market here that delivers anywhere near the power of the Focus RS is the 186kW Mazda MPS.
Nothing else comes close. The new front-drive Volkswagen Golf GTi - the sixth-generation - will deliver around 157kW from its turbocharged 2-litre engine when it arrives next September. The go-fast front-drive Renault Megane 3, also due here within the next 18 months, will deliver around 135kW.
The Focus RS will be clearly faster than all its hot hatch rivals, sprinting from zero to 100km/h in a claimed 5.5s and on to a top speed of 250km/h.
The key to putting almost 300bhp through the front wheels, say Ford engineers, is a specially developed front suspension system and limited-slip differential.
Ford looked at doing an all-wheel-drive evolution to distribute power to all four corners but abandoned the plan as it would add too much weight and bump up the price.
Jost Capito, Ford Europe's performance guru, headed development. "We want the new Focus RS to be a serious high-performance car, as much a car for driving enthusiasts as the one before it and classic Ford RS models of the past," he said.
"We're staying true to the core RS principles of an exciting yet affordable performance road car you can live with every day."
The front suspension system is known as a RevoKnuckle, designed to reduce steering disturbance and torque steer, the impact of torque in front-wheel-driven vehicles.
Torque steer occurs during hard acceleration, cornering or driving on uneven surfaces, when torque on the driven wheels exceeds grips levels. It is characterised by sudden turning force on the steering wheel.
In the Focus RS, the RevoKnuckle works in conjunction with a Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing limited-slip differential.
Ford engineers worked with Ford's Advanced Research Centre in Aachen, Germany, to develop the RevoKnuckle technology.
Engineers say it allows the simplicity of a traditional McPherson strut suspension arrangement but with settings that minimise steering disturbances and torque steer.
"The Ford Focus is an excellent base for a high-performance car - agile, responsive and stable," said Capito. "We studied at length how best to enhance these qualities for a high-performance model.
"Our work has shown that our approach in combining a tuned RevoKnuckle with the Quaife differential is an ideal solution for a high-performance front-wheel-drive road car like Focus RS."
No word on the price of the Focus RS yet, but the current Focus hot hatch, the turbocharged 2.5-litre XR5, costs $44,990. It delivers an impressive 165kW - 57kW less than the hero car.