ford Focus RS

Ford has finally released the long overdue press statement on the Focus RS, and to make up for the delay it’s 9,000 words long! However, we just picked out the interesting figures for you and put together a gallery of all the new pictures.

As we had already reported (but is now confirmed…) the Focus RS will start from £24,995 (around $35,000 US), and it will have a 300 hp engine that will shoot the fast Ford from 0-62 in 5.9 seconds and go on to an unlimited top speed of 163mph.

300hp seems like a lot to be going through a FWD car, and the reason that Ford did not opt for AWD is brought up by team RS Chief Engineer, Dirk Densing:

“Front-wheel-drive was our preference all along. All-wheel-drive systems add cost, weight, inertia and consequently, fuel consumption. Compensating for the significant weight of an all-wheel-drive system requires dynamic compromises we preferred not to make. If you can achieve the performance you want without steering disturbance, then front-wheel-drive is a better performance car – lighter and with a more precise, linear steering response than AWD. With the work of our advanced research team in Aachen, we were able to achieve this and deliver something genuinely different,”

Well, as long as they have achived this without, as Dirk puts, it ‘steering disturbance’ (silly amounts of torque steer…) then fair play to Team RS, but we shall let you know when we get our hands behind the wheel on the launch.

A new specially developed ESP system keeps you on track and has be designed to work with the driver. Although it can be turned off Ford boffins reckon that it goes round the Nburg ring just as fast with it on.

The Focus RS has also been tested at Fords Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium and has beaten the previous lap record set by the Ford GT, so it turns out this could just be the fastest Ford ever.