It doesn’t look much, does it? Sitting there parked at the pavement. Just another four door saloon with alloys. Admittedly big, fat, black, shiny 19 inch alloys, but then that’s the first thing most boy-racers and certain adults indulging memories of a misspent youth go for. The second thing is to paint the brake callipers. There’s more. Slight bulges over the wheel arches, a front bumper that might help clear the snow off the drive in winter plus a rather undramatic wing at the rear roof edge. Nope, doesn’t look much.
Wait a minute though, the sills have a more aero-sexily flowing shape to them while the twin exhaust pipes look a bit more like seaside sewage outfalls than auto-fume vents. And is that a diffuser sculpted around them?
Oddly enough there are no wild flashes of colour, stripes, added body vents, chrome strakes or long product names with initials running after them. Nothing to attract the wrong sort of attention. There isn’t event a ‘Focus’ badge on the car. Just a simple Ford logo and an ‘RS’ script.
Nothing special then, eh? So why does it need three extra gauges on top of the dashboard for oil temp and pressure and turbo boost? And it’s got a rather innocuous ‘Drive Mode’ button down on the central console beside the gearshift. The thick leather steering wheel rim with the blue stitching has a flat bottom so that even folk with a paunch can slide into the big winged buckets that adorn the front of the cabin. And there are three metal pedals glinting in the footwell.
Individually they are not much to make the car stand out from the crowd, but added all together it makes an almost unobtrusive, but distinctive package. And then there’s the bits you can’t see, like the 2.3 litre, 4 cylinder turbo job under the bonnet pumping out 345 bhp on to the road via an all-wheel drive system. Seriously, to the casual outsider, it really doesn’t look that quick.
If ‘looks can be deceiving’ then this is Eric Banner before someone gets him annoyed. Driving the Ford RS is just like any other fast Ford. It’s very quick and it handles well, then hit the ‘Drive Mode’ button and change it to ‘Sport’ and it becomes quicker and firmer. Seriously quicker.
The result is Greggs meets M&S, a full-fat, calorie-enriched, traditionally styled family car with luxury trimmings.
There’s a stretch of private road that I can sometimes access which reminds me a little of ‘Eau Rouge’. It starts on a long fast uphill left which swings over a crest, then downhill into a long fast righthander that goes back up the hill before the road levels out in the run up the drive to the big house. From a standing start, a quick car is already hitting 80 mph before the plunge and then it’s as fast as you dare through the hollow and up the other side. It’s that long plunge downhill into the bottom and up again which offers the biggest thrill as your stomach hits its own bump stops.
The RS was rock solid at 100 mph, but would it cope with a top speed of 165? Well, that’s for someone else to find out. But on the basis of a week long familiarisation with the machine over a variety of roads and conditions, I reckon it might just at that. There was only one limiting factor and it had nothing to do with power or aerodynamics or mechanical grip – it wasn’t my car!
Speaking of mechanical grip, that’s down to the rear differential, but not one as we know it from live axle Escorts. It actually comprises a gearset which utilises a pair of independently controlled clutches. That allows the front-mounted power take-off unit to send up to 70% of torque to the rear, with the rear ‘diff’ able to send up to 100% of that torque to either of the rear wheels, or provide a straight 50/50 split, depending on what the drivetrain is telling the sensors. Add to that a set of 235/35 fat Michelin Pilot Super Sports and you have a car which wills tick to the road like a wean to a free toffee apple.
Given the performance of the car, one can almost forgive the firm ride at sensible speeds in ‘Normal’ mode. It can get a bit wearing over Scotland’s weather ravaged road network but find a decent stretch of road and there is only one limiting factor to wholesale enjoyment, and that’s the national speed limits. Like many cars of its breed, it’s too fast for British roads.
The only other real niggle that I had was the height of the front seat. The two front Recaros sit on their own subframe which sets them higher up than a standard Focus making the driver feel perched rather than sat-in. Having said that the seats are actually quite comfortable and the driving position is acceptably good, but it could be just perfect if the seat could be set a little lower.
Then again, this is a car that offers almost ‘supercar’ performance, but which will give you change out of 30 grand. I can put up with a few slices less for that sort of bread.
It’s therefore a foregone conclusion. I’d have one like a shot, just for the noise, the grip and the fun, but to find its limits and to properly use the ‘Track’ or ‘Drift’ modes you’d need to hire Knockhill for an afternoon.
The test car from Ford did have a few extras which added to the price. The silver-flecked Nitrous Blue paint was an extra £745 and the Luxury Pack was another £1000 for powered door mirrors, parking sensors, cruise control, privacy glass and Ford’s Key Free system. The 19 inch black alloys were a £595 extra and the Recaros added another £1145, which made me think that the standard seats might be worth a trial before buying. The Sat-Nav and upgraded speaker system was £465 and the matching paint brake callipers £100. And there was one extra little ‘gimmick’ which is well worth the 85 quid asking fee, and that is the door edge protectors. When you open a front or rear door, a small shaped plastic wedge folds out to protect your precious paintwork from hitting against other parked cars or walls. Just one thing, other car drivers should have the system too.