Kevin Haggarthy road tests the new hot hatch rage – the new 300 bhp Ford Focus RS
Right. So the eighties are back then; or so says Ford with their latest Hot Hatch King. The lights are red, you look around, ‘Bring it on’ says the Focus RS, to anyone who dares ‘…show me what you’ve got, and I’ll show you what for mate…and more!’ The lights hit green, its dry and your cheeky challenger just dare raise his engine note to threaten you away from the lights and that’s it – challenge done as he watches the Focus RS SCREECH! away in first, then keep its tyres spinning in second, hit third gear and the tyres are still screeching – in the dry! - ’Wow’! This is true blooded serious hot hatch stuff. Take a serious look at the tail lights on that Focus RS, for it is probably the last time you will ever see that car.
All or nothing?
So what’s come over Ford then? We thought they’d said goodbye to the all- or-nothing hot hatch, as per its old Turbo RS et al, and the days of the Peugeot 205 1.9’s and blown Renault Turbos – every insurance company hated them, and every boy racer loved them. At that time Ford had had enough of a growing ungainly reputation – too many boy racers were hitting too many lamp posts and trees, and no one wanted to be at the butt end of what was becoming quite a political issue on the roads.
Ford were amongst the first to get sensible, and cool everyone down with its sober but wonderful to drive Focus ST – a sensible and exhilarating car, involving, and ‘nice’ to drive, but with the added advantage of sharper handling and a more rewarding drive over the standard car. Eventually a limited edition wild-cat RS followed that just couldn’t contain 212 bhp driving the front wheels, without pulling you quite markedly in a direction you didn’t want to go when throttling hard out of a bend.
Speed Demon!…
Yet this new Focus RS has gone even more ballistic; it has a beautifully refined but understandably firm ride at low speed but when you give it some and the Turbo wrenches control, you are unlikely to get more speed and performance per pound than any car available to the public anywhere – period. It’s a bit all or nothing this one – it’s the ‘Focus RS Licence Loser’ when the devil takes you, with razor sharp precise steering and handling to match, and yet when you calm down and behave yourself on the way to Tescos, no one would ever think you could be such a speed demon on demand. Always the sign of a great car.
What makes this Focus RS special is that it is all usable performance, B road burning stuff, and in the hands of a good driver will challenge the very fastest of cars money can buy when you are assaulting the Countryside’s twists and turns. I cannot think of a car other than Porsche or Ferrari territory that will master B roads with such finesse and outright speed.
But it needs driving does the new RS, and more importantly it needs a skilled hand behind the wheel to exploit the performance safely. And herein lies the worry – with such outright acceleration, a Turbo charger that holds you in rocket mode, and a pedal set-up which (surprisingly for this kind of car) is not entirely friendly to the chassis balancing skill of heel and toe gear changes, -a method of braking and changing down a gear at the same time- the Focus RS could end up getting the better of the unskilled/inexperienced driver setting out to exploit its exceptional performance to the full.
The new King?
Being capable of such out-right performance the RS will carry tremendous front wheel powered speed into a bend, the brakes are well upto shaving the speed off in time, but the driver’s challenge will be tackling that bend, managing the finely tuned weight distribution through it, and coming out of it knowing just when to apply the power. A lot of decisions to make, accurately and confidently, for the push-on driver. If this all sounds like driving instructor gobble-de-gook, that is exactly what it is – I seriously think Ford should offer a complementary safety performance road driving course to owners of this car…then no worries.
We suspect that the new RS will now take the Hot Hatch crown. It is an exceptional achievement by any measure – but as a tool for the road, and indeed for its owner, it’ll be about knowing when to go slow that counts.
Kevin Haggarthy
FORD FOCUS RS - TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
Price £25,740
Engine Type
2.5L 20 V DOHC RS
Max power ISO PS (kW)
At engine speed (rpm) 305 PS (224kW) 6500
Cylinders - 5, in-line
Max speed (kph) 263
Acceleration (sec)
0-100 km/h 5.9 secs
50-100 km/h (in 4th. gear) 5.3 secs
Fuel Consumption
Combined (ECE l/100 km) 30.5 mpg
