New Focus RS – final details revealed

Have you got your hands on one yet, gents? Can't wait to read your thoughts as I'm worried I might suddenly acquire an inexplicable liking of Watchdog having read What Car?'s 'first drive' earlier. Think Jason Socrates is piloting one on Fifth Gear tonight too...

Yup like everyone else looking forward to see what DR makes of the new FRS. Wonder if they'll get one in the lairy bright green paint job lol.

300bhp in a FWD car is nothing these days. Plenty of Seat Leon Cupra / Golf GTI ED30 owners have modified their cars to well over 330bhp..some have even shown 350bhp on the rollers. But its not the power that's the problem really, its the way the torque is delivered.

Should be interesting if Mountune releases a remap for the FRS like they did for the ST.

I'm looking forward to the reviews of the RS, i don't think Ford will want to go down the whole torque steer debate of the first model and it will be well sorted this time round. After seeing the performance of the DR team's Mountune machine, i think the RS will/should be awesome. Straight in at the deep end with the Evo and STI for the review, i read somewhere that Ford claim you didn't 4WD, and the RS is more enjoyable etc as 2WD. I've a 340BHP STI, and i can't imagine power anywhere near that through the front wheels alone. Can't wait!

Looking forward to what the DR guys and the other mags think of the new RS. My only disappointment is the bloated weight. I have a modified MK1 FRS which runs similar power and torque to the new car, but with almost 200Kgs less weight - and no Traction Control or ESP!

If the DR guys want to compare the new car to an uprated MK1, just let me know... After all it was Chris Harris's glowing write ups of the original that convinced me to buy one, so I kind of owe him a favour!

@Scoobiewrx: WRC cars may ostensibly have only 300 bhp, but they produce a lot more torque than an equivalent road car; most of the huge engine development budgets for WRC were focused on reducing internal friction and maximising torque. A WRC Focus, for instance, has well over 400 lb/ft, which would be too much for fwd to cope with.

It's interesting to note, though, that the fwd Peugeot 306 Maxi came 2nd overall in the Tour de Corse in 1998, beating all of the WRC cars bar winner Colin McRae, who won by only a few seconds.

Of course, on gravel 4wd is much quicker, and it is this, together with the WRC regulations, that partly explain why all WRC cars are 4wd.

JP

Looking forward for it to be in the hands of DR..

There's a lot to clarify about those options: FWD vs 4WD; LSD; Weigh;...

In the end this resumes to the package as a whole and not simply the sum of its parts!

@Jonathan Prestidge:

You're absolutely right about the diff, i've just had a look on the Quaife site, so i stand totally corrected. Thanks for that!!

Maybe this will drive better than i think. I just remember how the last one drove and if i remember rightly that had a Quaife Diff as well so hopefully it won't be quite so steering intensive as that!!

I do however disagree about cars like this and 4WD. It has 300bhp and that's a fair bit of power, allied to 320lb/ft of torque going through the front wheels so i still think it's going to be a bit of a handful no matter how good this diff is.

Rally cars are mostly 4WD these days as is the current WRC Focus, and they are limited to 300bhp. They realised long ago though that these cars are far better in 4WD mode than either FWD or RWD so baring in mind these WRC teams know a heck of a lot more about handling and driving than 99% of joe public i think it's safe to assume there's a damn good reason for having 4WD, and these cars run on a lot of tarmac stages these days so i'll stick with 4WD as being the better option for this car.

Rally teams aren't so cost concious as the manufacturers and these cars aren't being sold on to joe public and are there for one purpose only so i reckon if it wasn't a cost issue for the manufacturer or the buyer i'm pretty sure this car would have had 4WD from the start.

I won't even mention the weight of the thing, there's something much more telling of how this car is turning out to be much more driven by marketing than by... well... drivers.

The much highlighted RevoKnuckle system is nothing more than the front suspension system Renault Sport introduced with the Megane 225 back in 2004, and started using on the Clio with the 197! It's not revolutionary Ford engineering, more of a rip-off of Renault Sport...

@Scoobiewrx: I agree that it's a bit heavy, but I don't agree with your assertions about how the diff will work. It looks to me like a standard Quaife torque sensing diff that has been more carefully matched to the characteristics of the car than the one in the previous RS. I don't believe that it is an electonically controlled diff, like those in the more recent BMW M cars.

Regarding 4WD, I think its benefits are over-stated at this level of power; with modern suspension and tyre design, fwd can be every bit as fast as 4wd for a given power to weight ratio, up to about 250 bhp/ton.

Take a look at the results from the Castle Combe Saloons Championship from a few years ago, and you will see that a fwd turbo car was a regular overall winner, even though it was up against a number of well driven, similarly powerful 4WD cars. It is only in the last couple of years, during which time power levels have risen to over 400bhp, that the FWD cars have had trouble being competitive.

I'm no great fan of FWD, but I don't think that 4WD is always a better alternative.

JP
JP

The weight is a problem, however I'm horrified by the report by car magazine. They said "Engine is the same basic 2.5 litre Volvo sourced five-pot you'll find in the ST, but surprisingly, the soundtrack is markedly different to the lesser car's ur-Quattro-like fruitiness. Yes the five-pot warble is still there - it's particularly noticable betwen 3000 and 4000rpm, subtly reminding you that this is the first Escort or Focus RS to have anything other than four cylinders - but what's more apparent in the RS is the louder exhaust note , the more pronounched whistle of boost and the extremely vocal dump value p-tish between gearchanges"

What! P-Tish noises and no mention of the pops and bangs like the ST? Disaster...

Renault seem to have demonstrated the way forward in hotter-still-hot hatches.Why does it weigh so much more than the standard ST? Would anyone at DR care to speculate?

Other than the further increase in weight, I agree with scooby about the 4wd.

Shame it weighs 1467kg

I think this car is still too heavy at 1465Kg. The old one suffered from awful torque steer and understeered like a pig when trying to get the power down through corners and that was even lighter than this new version although it was still a lot of fun to drive.

I suspect this trick new diff is more electronic than mechanical and working in conjunction with the ECU will probably strangle power/torque on take off to avoid torque steer and again when it senses wheel slip in a corner the same again to avoid more torque steer and understeer. It wouldn't surprise me if the diff stays open most of the time, rarely being on full lock and i reckon it will take some noticeable time to react, however i will be interested to find out how quickly the diff kicks in.

My scoob sportwagon is classed as an estate and as standard weighs 1410Kg. 55Kgs lighter than the RS and that includes a hefty 4WD system, 294mm rotors all round with 4pot calipers front, two pots at the back, and not the lightest 17" alloys on the market. What on earth are they doing to weigh down such a small car!! I've read their 37 page press release/blurb and it just sounds like the usual gloss to me.

I still think they should have made it 4WD and then dealt with understeer through suspension and proper geometry setup, then torque steer wouldn't be a problem. I still think there will be a bit of torque steer on take off and i bet they don't get rid of all the understeer completely. They will really have to reign in the power in corners to stop all that and i suspect you'll notice a reduction in torque when trying to power out.

I appreciate though they are trying to make the car handle more neutrally and i applaud all that but the key things here for me are the weight and still after all these years a serious lack of 4WD.

This vehicle is still nothing like the 4WD rally going version and i think that is a great shame, specially for the fans. If they applied 4WD i could see these cars selling at a phenominal rate!!