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Jaggy Cars - July 2010
Ford Focus RS500
Spawn of Batmobile
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a hand grenade in your pants and pulled the pin? Or poked a lion in the eye with a sharp stick when you were wearing wellingtons with concrete soles? Or walked up to Mike Tyson and kicked him in the nuts?
I’m sure they’ve all crossed our minds at one point, usually during a night out with the idiots on the happy juice. It’s a bloke thing, how tough do you think you are when you’re drunk? Well, now you can get the same effect without the pain, the blood and the gore. Fire up a Ford Focus RS500.
It’s like Guy Fawkes meets Hannibal Lecter and teams up with Felicity Kendal. One wants to spill your guts while another wants to blow you up, and the third one just wants to soothe and cosset your nether regions, but not necessarily in that order.
There’s a sense of occasion when you climb aboard, strap yourself in and press the start button on the RS500. Which is odd really, because to all intents and purposes this is a family hatchback. And yet it’s not like the sense of occasion you experience when you climb inside the latest Ferrari or Porsche, simply because you expect it. And you pay for it.
What you don’t expect is the same sort of feeling from something that started life as a means of getting the weans to school in the morning and the groceries at the weekend. Nor do you expect it from something that is a quarter of the price of a tantalising supercar.
And having already driven the ‘standard’ Focus RS I wasn’t really expecting to be so smitten again, and yet I was. It had nothing to do with the outward appearance though. No doubt I’m in the minority here, but there’s nothing wrong with the matt black finish that a heavy duty Black & Decker and a gallon of Autoglym couldn’t improve. Nope I don’t really like it. The only folk who could possibly like this wear masks and superhero costumes at weekends and think they look cool.
Things improve once you’re inside though, even if it feels as though you’re climbing inside Batman’s underpants. I don’t mind the bleak blackness in here. It all adds to the drama. And there, just at the foot of the six speed gearshift is a thumb sized button marked ‘Power’. Press that and Icelandic volcanoes become mole humps in your garden.
How sad is this? Driving over the Tay Bridge I lowered the windows, dipped the clutch and blipped the throttle. The subdued thunder reverberated along the concrete walls. Just one complaint, it was still too quiet.
But don’t let the near silence fool you, the world erupts when you see a long open stretch of road snaking ahead, and you floor it. There’s no neck-snapping acceleration, just a gut-compressing impression of pace, like Dr Who’s Police box lifting off and heading for outer space.
The leather steering wheel is almost fetishly thick, the gears slice into their metal slots like Wolverine’s claws and the tyres cling for dear life on to what passes as tarmacadam in Scotland. And yes you can make it go all squirmy over potholes, and yes you can induce torque steer if you go daft on the exit from bends, but drive it like you mean it and this thing is just as quick as any Teutonic rocket or Italian spellbinder over just about any road.
Get all the braking over with as you approach a corner, pick your line and then feed in the power – only floor it if you can see the exit and there’s nothing coming the other way. Gawd does it love bends.
The braking can be left impossibly late. Despite having only two driven wheels, those big red callipers seen through the black multi-spoke wheels are not just for show. They stop you quicker than a bouncer spotting your white trainers.
With 350 PS (345 bhp) as against 305 PS (301 bhp), Ford claims it is 15 per cent more powerful than the ‘plain’ RS but that’s hard to prove on the public road. Yes there is added sharpness, and yes there is more mid and top-end surge as the turbo pumps more oomph into the boiler room, but the car is still as tractable and as docile as a lamb tootling around town.
This is the car’s biggest attribute. This ability to convert from tarmac-sizzler to granny transport at first sight of a 30 speed limit. For sure the ride is that bit firmer than an ordinary Focus, but it’s nowhere near as stiff and unyielding as some other hot-hatches. This is a car that could be used on a daily basis without too much compromise and without shaking itself to bits.
In fact it’s surprising just haw tractable and docile this beastie is. It’s more of a sweet and bumbling Clark Kent than a bitter and twisted Bruce Wayne, but with the same ability to switch from placid to manic at the first twitch of the right foot.
The extra performance comes primarily from better breathing. A larger air-to-air intercooler enables a denser charge to be blown into the cylinder head while a larger diameter exhaust downpipe allows the burnt gas to get out quicker. Along with a larger air filter box, bigger fuel pump and recalibrated ECU, this results in a torque figure of 460 Nm as opposed to 440. Not a big jump, but it takes a third of a second off the nought to 60 time. Where it really counts though is in the nought to 100 mph time –just the quickest 12.2 seconds of your life!
And then we come to the bigger question. Would I have one? Yup, no question, but would I buy one with my own money? Probably not. For 8 grand less I could buy one nearly as quick in a choice of colours and still have change enough to buy a nearly new Fireblade!
And yet all five hundred RS500s were sold within 12 hours of officially going on sale. How could that happen? For a few days before the official launch Ford had been running a teaser ad showing footage of the car in action – in the dark, and then somebody hacked into the website and got some real pictures. From then on dealers had a field day and were sold out even before the price was announced.
Despite the recession it proves that a nutter is easily parted from his money - if exclusivity can be guaranteed. Mind you, from a manufacturer’s point of view, that’s good business if you can get it.
In Short:
Price: £35,750
Engine: 2522 cc, 5 cylinder petrol with 345 bhp
Performance: 0-62 mph in 5.6 seconds, flat out at 165 mph
Economy: 40.3 mpg extra urban, 30.5 mpg combined
CO2 emissions: 225 g/km
Insurance Group: ?
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