Late But Welcome
by David Finlay (09 Sep 02)

Given half a chance, many motoring writers will switch to attack mode and start asking Ford embarrassing questions about why the long-promised Focus RS took so long to reach production. The simple answer is that the originally quoted 13 months was a hopeless under-estimate of how long it would take to develop one of the fastest ever European production Fords.

Still, it's here now. Officially on sale from October 1st, the RS is billed as being the closest the likes of you and me can get to owning a World Rally Championship Focus. The apparent similarity between the two cars goes beyond the fact that the RS is wider than all the other road versions, with a stance very similar to that of the WRC car in tarmac trim; it also encompasses many of the component suppliers.

So, while Garrett provides Ford with its turbochargers for the rally cars, and OZ the wheels, and Sachs the dampers, Brembo the brakes, Quaife the differential, AP the clutch and Sparco the seats, the same companies also provide the same bits for the RS. Cool, huh?

It's a good piece of marketing, but of course the similarities do eventually stop somewhere. Anyone who chooses an RS is buying into the WRC ethos, but not the WRC technology or anything close to it. One of the most dramatic differences is the fact that, while four-wheel drive is absolutely fundamental to the rally cars, it is not an option on the road-going ones.

It was interesting to hear the replies of two different Ford people to the same, rather aggressively phrased question from a journalist who wanted to know why on earth the RS could not have a 4x4 system like the rally cars. "It doesn't need it," said a PR person, as PR people do. "It's a packaging problem," said a technician, as technicians do.

In fact there was a lot of truth in both answers. Even with production limited to just 30 cars a today, it would be a nightmare to take a standard Focus shell and rework it so that it could house a propshaft and rear axle assembly. (The resulting car would also cost a heck of a lot more than the £19,995 of the RS as it stands.)

On the other hand, the PR version was far more accurate than you might suppose considering this Focus pumps around 220bhp through the front wheels. In two days I spent the best part of six hours in an RS, driving and being driven fast and slow, along motorways and up narrow hillside roads, in warm weather and through rain. I still haven't experienced any wheelspin. And that's not because the traction control kept coming in, because the RS doesn't have a traction control system. Like the man said, it doesn't need it.

There wasn't a lot of torque steer either, though you can certainly force the issue by driving roughly. The RS isn't a car that needs to be muscled - if you do that it still behaves fairly well because it has such phenomenal grip, but it won't be nearly as effective as if you treat it gently and let it do the work.

That high level of grip has been achieved partly by making sure the car is not too stiff. The front anti-roll bar, for example, is actually thinner than on other Focus models, so as not to overload the outer wheel during lateral weight transfer. But this softness does not translate into a smooth ride, because the 18" Michelin Pilot Sport tyres are super-low profile affairs. There is no cushioning effect at all, so you feel the effect of every last ripple in the road surface.

There's enough power to make the RS a very rapid straight-line car, though you do have to battle against substantial turbo lag. Or so it feels. In comparing this car with other turbocharged rivals such as the Subaru Impreza WRC, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII and Audi S3, I reckoned the Ford's turbo behaviour was far more unruly. But all those cars are four-wheel drive, and when the boost does kick in the effect is less obvious, since the resulting power is being transferred to all four corners. The front end of the Focus gets the full effect, so maybe that's what makes the lag so noticeable.

One thing that pleased me greatly about the car was that the close-ratio gearbox has only five gears, rather than the six that other manufacturers have been tempted to use in similar circumstances. The Focus RS team abandoned that idea at an early stage - whether or not there was a financial issue here is beside the point, because five gears are quite enough for a car with such a wide spread of power across the rev range. Six would be confusing, inappropriate and wrong.

With all the power available you need pretty good brakes to compensate, and Brembo has certainly done a fantastic job here. Even after the most difficult sections of the route there was very little smell of roasted linings, only the thinnest layer of dust on the front wheels, and nothing remotely resembling pad fade. (A Ford technician told me that during a series of slam-on-the-anchors 100-0mph tests, an RS knocked off all that speed more efficiently on the fourteenth run that it had on the first. I can quite believe it.)

There remains the question of what the RS is up against in the market. Pitching it just below £20,000 was a good move, though it's substantially more expensive than the Honda Civic Type-R. The Subaru, the Mitsubishi and to some extent the Audi listed above cost more, but they are all 4x4s.

Tricky. But maybe the best answer is the one that avoids the question - the RS does not have a direct rival because it will appeal most to Ford enthusiasts who like the idea of the links (however tenuous) with Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz and Markko Martin and the whole WRC deal. No other Focus can give them this to anything like the extent of the RS. For that matter, no other Focus can give them such a combination of yee-haa performance, excellent chassis engineering and road car practicality - and nor, for that matter, can almost anything else at the price.

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