2016 Ford Focus Review. Ford’s RS branch And The New RS Focus Specs
Ford’s RS branch, standing for Rally Sport, started in the early 70s with the first Ford Escorts. Since then, the RS team has been tuning compact Fords for rally racing. As Ford releases a new facelift for its Focus for 2015, the RS team simultaneously has been cooking up what will be the third street legal iteration of the Focus RS. This time, however, it’s the first Focus RS with an AWD system, and also the first Focus RS that actually is going to make it over to The States.
The RS is going to be equipped with a 2.3L four cylinder EcoBoost engine sourced from a Mustang that is going to have at least 315hp, that will be mated to a true 6 speed manual and only a manual. Ford is obviously going after the purists and enthusiasts (and WRX/Golf R drivers) with this one, and they don’t seem to be disappointing
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The drive-train equipped on the RS is also capable of sending 70% power to the rear with torque vectoring to each side, and intriguingly Ford is including a “drift mode” of sorts, interestingly enough with Ken Block as a project consultant, that will let the rear end out in a controlled fashion. The computer is supposed to take control if it detects that the rotation of the drift is too much and it also detects if your steering input is keeping up with that rotation and prevent you from spinning out. Definitely a neat feature, and of course the hardcore driver can still turn all the stability and traction stuff off and have at it themselves.
Ford is finally going after the global market with this one and it definitely ticks a lot of the boxes of what quite a lot of people are looking for in a car, and with rumors hinting that the price would be somewhere between $35-40k, it’s definitely going to be in the same ballpark as the WRX STI and Golf R. I await the endless comparisons once it hits the market, but from what is known so far the Focus RS is definitely going to be a much more serious contender than before.
