The Goodwood Test: Ford Focus RS – The Purest Fast Hatchback?

Heritage

Fast, compact cars have been part of the very fabric of Ford’s presence in the European market ever since Walter Hayes asked Colin Chapman to provide Ford with a 1000 Lotus engines to homologate a car for Group 2 racing in 1963. That car became known as the Lotus Cortina and ever since there has hardly been a time when Ford did not have a genuinely high performance family car in its model lines.

But the line that leads directly to this new Focus RS began a little later, in 1968, with the introduction of the original Ford Escort. Fast versions existed from the outset and, in Twin Cam form, Frank Gardner won the 1968 British Saloon Car Championship. Cars like the RS1600 and RS1800 won cult followings even before Ray Doyle appeared in an RS2000 in ‘The Professionals’. From there it was XR3s, XR3is until, in 1992, the whole genre took a massive leap forward with the Escort RS Cosworth. Ironically it wasn’t really an Escort at all but a cut down, re-clad Sierra but at the time few noticed and fewer cared. The Focus replaced the Escort in 1998 but it would be another four years before the first Focus RS was launched with a 2-litre turbo four producing 212bhp and a chassis offering landmark handling for a front-wheel drive car.

But we’d still have to wait until 2009 to see the next Focus RS, this time with a Volvo-sourced 2.5-litre five cylinder motor producing a 301bhp in the standard car and no fewer than 345bhp in the Focus RS500 – all through the front wheels. As family car rides went, they came no wilder than this.

Design

Today’s 2.3-litre, four cylinder Focus RS engine is both smaller and has fewer cylinders than the last, but the same 345bhp as the old RS500, and Ford has concluded quite rightly that such potential can only be properly harnessed with four wheel drive. But unlike similar systems that tend only to direct power to the rear wheels when needed, the RS has a 50/50 standard torque split, variable to up to 30/70 in favour of the rear. The car also comes with a specially stiffened shell, an ‘active’ rear diff capable of sending 100 per cent of the rear axle’s power to either wheel and, of course bespoke suspension settings, vast brakes and tyres and the obligatory go faster body kit. 

Performance

For the money and within the realm of high performance hatchbacks, nothing gets near the Focus RS. Even with a standard six speed manual gearbox dramatically impeding its on-paper acceleration, it can still hit 62mph from rest in 4.7sec. With a double clutch transmission, that figure might have been as low as 4.4sec. So it fairly explodes out of the blocks. The engine is not as characterful as the old five-cylinder motor and you can never quite escape the sense that it’s cast in a purely supporting role to the chassis, of which more in a minute, but it is still supremely fit for purpose. The gearbox is pleasant to use too, fast and accurate if not quite as mechanical in feel as those fitted to its closest rivals, the Honda Civic Type R and Volkswagen Golf R.

Passion

This is where the Focus RS stands alone. If all you want from such a car is an ability to split your face into a huge stupid grin, forget not only the Honda and VW, but far more expensive machines like the Audi RS3 and Mercedes-AMG A45 too. The Focus is quite heavy but its chassis is so deftly set up, the Ford is not only ridiculously quick from one point to the next, it has the feel and the neutral responses that are the hallmarks of all truly great driving machines.

On the track you can activate its infamous ‘Drift Mode’ whereupon it will reconfigure its four-wheel drive system to allow easily held slides, but it this is still a street machine, not a race track refugee. That said, if ride, refinement and interior ambience are important, its German opposition does it better and, for the money, a Golf R is an easier car with which to live. But as a pure driving machine and among all fast hatchbacks, it is Ford that has once more set the standard to which all others must now aspire.

Price tag of our car £31,000 (Focus RS)