RS stirs pangs of lust

There's an exoticism about the likes of Porsche, or Ferrari, or even the humbler Lotus and Morgan cars, which attracts owners who want to make a statement as much about their financial status as of their driving preferences.



But there's something quite different about those who buy, or lust after, RS Fords. You don't put them into any financial slot, because they come from all sizes of bank balance. You don't consider them to be elite, because if they were they wouldn't be interested in being behind a Ford badge, even one which can whip Porsches and Ferraris betimes. In fact, you don't consider them special at all.

They're just what they consider themselves to be. Enthusiasts. Enthusiasts for one pair of automotive letters, granted, but just Ford motorheads, really. Even in my own small circle of friends and acquaintances, I know a doctor who used to own one; a musician too, who has a day job as a solicitor to allow him the luxury of playing music; a former banker, who got out of that business before it became synonymous with villainy; and a motor mechanic, the kind who still can get his hands dirty in an engine sump.



All of them will fondly remember their RSs, whether Escorts, Sierras, or whatever. All of them will tell you stories about them, except that, unlike golfers or horse-racing enthusiasts, they won't bore you with shot by shot or jump by jump detail. They won't tell you about their former loves at all unless they know you're interested.

That's probably because owning and driving an RS is both a kind of private pleasure and an everyday one. RS Fords have never been 'extra' cars, used only on weekends while something more prosaic did the daily commuting duty. An RS had to be a car for all days, for all seasons, for all reasons.

There have been 22 Ford models with the RS badge. And for some time, Ford has been working on the latest, knowing there's a pent-up demand not satisfied with the ST variant of the current Focus.



Well, it'll be here in a few weeks. Focus RS as I saw and drove it a while back will certainly satisfy the lusts and expectations of those fans I've just mentioned. Those with the wish and the will to spend around €43,000 on the second Focus to carry their favourite badge will get something that first and foremost looks the part.

A substantially more muscular styling front, side and rear sets the car off well from the ordinary car. But it's style that is useful, not merely for the look.

For reasons of stability, among others, the new RS has a wider track, and the sheetmetal had to accommodate that. The new apron incorporates both a required larger air intake and the aerodynamic elements to help keep the nose down at speed.



The double wing over the rear window will make a boy-racer's heart race, but when a car has the performance indicated by a 0-100 km/h sprint of 5.6 seconds it is also a real necessity to pin the car to the road.

No sports hatch is properly finished without the sound, and the Focus RS's engineers have tuned the car's exhaust system to provide an invigorating crackle when the loud pedal is pushed with brio. Just in case the car behind doesn't know where this is coming from, the RS sports a brace of very visible large exhaust pipes.

There's real power behind that crackle. The latest Focus RS is the fastest production Ford ever built in Europe, a performance punched along by 305hp from the 2.5 5-cylinder engine. A hefty variant of this Volvo-sourced powerhouse is already familiar in the Focus ST, but in this application it has been very substantially modified indeed.

Metal-sprayed bores in the aluminium block, and a more powerful turbocharger, capable of up to 1.8 bar instead of the ST’s 130 bar, are a couple of the changes. The 6-speed gearbox was also toughened up, and the suspension stiffened.

Getting all that power to the ground in an FWD car posed special problems. Traditionally, to avoid very troublesome torque steer, a carmaker would go AWD. Ford say they considered it to the level of actually building a prototype AWD, but for cost and weight reasons, decided not to go the route.

The guys on the WRC desk in Ford Performance Vehicles Division had been working up a brand new idea aimed at dealing with just that problem. So the RS team adapted it for their baby, and it works a treat. Patented, and branded as the RevoKnuckle, the system separates the power and steering forces, offering a driving feel that retains the edginess of FWD without the disruptive torque steer.

To drive in the hills at the back of Nice, the new car showed a very sporting and punchy personality when pushed to show what it can do, especially by a co-driver with rally experience and an ability far beyond mine. On the other hand, as real owners of RS Fords require, it was well suited to the city commute, if a little wasted on it.

I'll be driving one in Irish conditions soon, and will see if the very evident fun factor from Nice can be replicated here. I have a couple of routes in mind, but for obvious reasons I'm not saying where.

Meanwhile, maybe 50 or so will roll out onto Irish roads this year, if the optimists in Ford Ireland are proved correct. The fact that the first dozen allocated were sold out well before launch here is a good indicator.

RS lives again. I know a doctor, a lawyer, a former banker, and a mechanic with oily fingernails who are already feeling nostalgic pangs of lust. Brian Byrne.