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- Ford Focus RS – A Blast From the Past!
Ford Focus RS – A Blast From the Past!
- By Jon Barlow
- Published 24 September 2008
- Ford
- Unrated
Old people, don’t you just love ‘em? I have just been sitting in the waiting room at my local surgery and whilst being kept waiting for ages to see the Doctor I have had to listen to continuous complaining about how bad things are today. If they were referring to how long you have to wait to be seen I must admit I would be inclined to agree but that seemed to be the least of their worries. The number of stabbings and grisly murders seemed quite high on their agenda, I was tempted to point out that we were in a rural English village where there are no stabbings, murders or very little of anything else for that matter but then it was my turn to face the Doc.
It started me thinking though that apart from poor health and short life expectancy not to mention the lack of inventions like the electric can opener, if things really are better these days then why is there so much nostalgia and a desire to recreate days of old. This is very apparent in the motor industry where it seems that hardly a month goes by when a car manufacturer isn’t unveiling a model which is hankering after the heady carefree motoring of the past. It’s either that or they have just run out of imagination and trot out models that they think we have long forgotten the names of.
There is one name that is making a very welcome return and that is the Ford RS. Standing for Rallye Sport (note the clever addition of a letter e on the end of the word rally) The earliest Ford to proudly wear the RS badge was the Escort RS1600 way back in 1970. Since then the RS name has been associated with high performance and been the subject of many a young male’s fantasy. The latest RS model the Focus is due to appear early in 2009 although a Focus RS was briefly produced back in 2002-03 but this seems to have been forgotten about and so the ST took up the challenge for a while.
The ST has proved to be very successful so some clever marketing person at Ford must have thought ‘ah hah what if we bring out a higher performance RS model then this will raise the level of desirability even higher and people will want to buy an RS instead’. Then someone pipes up with, ‘yes but who’s going to buy the ST then?’ It all gets a bit confusing after that but now we can see what the new RS has to offer I’m sure everything will sort itself out.
At the heart of the new Focus RS is a specially developed, turbocharged version of the existing Duratec 2.5-litre 5-cylinder engine. This has been significantly revised for high performance. The engine is due to produce an impressive power output of 300PS and over 410Nm of torque, contributing to an excellent power-to-weight ratio.
Although still in development, early performance testing has indicated a 0-100km/h (0-62mph) time of less than six seconds.
There are also wider wheel arches and a wider track, plus triangular, RS-badged vents on the flanks. Two classic-style bonnet louvres are both a styling hint at the power beneath as well as serving a practical purpose. The completely new front bumper design for the Focus RS incorporates a deep front air dam with a large, mesh lower grille. This feature represents the latest Ford 'kinetic design' face. Chromed xenon headlamps stand out and are framed by matt-black housings with unique additional vents running underneath.
The RS is equipped with an innovative front suspension system known as a ‘RevoKnuckle’, which is designed to reduce unwanted torque steer, the impact of torque on steering in front-wheel drive vehicles. Torque steer occurs during hard acceleration, cornering or driving on uneven surfaces, when torque on the driven wheels exceeds grip levels. The Ford RS of old would have had none of this technology so I would argue that maybe things weren’t that good in the past, certainly in automotive terms.
It started me thinking though that apart from poor health and short life expectancy not to mention the lack of inventions like the electric can opener, if things really are better these days then why is there so much nostalgia and a desire to recreate days of old. This is very apparent in the motor industry where it seems that hardly a month goes by when a car manufacturer isn’t unveiling a model which is hankering after the heady carefree motoring of the past. It’s either that or they have just run out of imagination and trot out models that they think we have long forgotten the names of.
There is one name that is making a very welcome return and that is the Ford RS. Standing for Rallye Sport (note the clever addition of a letter e on the end of the word rally) The earliest Ford to proudly wear the RS badge was the Escort RS1600 way back in 1970. Since then the RS name has been associated with high performance and been the subject of many a young male’s fantasy. The latest RS model the Focus is due to appear early in 2009 although a Focus RS was briefly produced back in 2002-03 but this seems to have been forgotten about and so the ST took up the challenge for a while.
The ST has proved to be very successful so some clever marketing person at Ford must have thought ‘ah hah what if we bring out a higher performance RS model then this will raise the level of desirability even higher and people will want to buy an RS instead’. Then someone pipes up with, ‘yes but who’s going to buy the ST then?’ It all gets a bit confusing after that but now we can see what the new RS has to offer I’m sure everything will sort itself out.
At the heart of the new Focus RS is a specially developed, turbocharged version of the existing Duratec 2.5-litre 5-cylinder engine. This has been significantly revised for high performance. The engine is due to produce an impressive power output of 300PS and over 410Nm of torque, contributing to an excellent power-to-weight ratio.
Although still in development, early performance testing has indicated a 0-100km/h (0-62mph) time of less than six seconds.
There are also wider wheel arches and a wider track, plus triangular, RS-badged vents on the flanks. Two classic-style bonnet louvres are both a styling hint at the power beneath as well as serving a practical purpose. The completely new front bumper design for the Focus RS incorporates a deep front air dam with a large, mesh lower grille. This feature represents the latest Ford 'kinetic design' face. Chromed xenon headlamps stand out and are framed by matt-black housings with unique additional vents running underneath.
The RS is equipped with an innovative front suspension system known as a ‘RevoKnuckle’, which is designed to reduce unwanted torque steer, the impact of torque on steering in front-wheel drive vehicles. Torque steer occurs during hard acceleration, cornering or driving on uneven surfaces, when torque on the driven wheels exceeds grip levels. The Ford RS of old would have had none of this technology so I would argue that maybe things weren’t that good in the past, certainly in automotive terms.
