America may be generally averse to the hatchback genre, but hot hatches are a different matter. VW’s stellar GTI sold well enough stateside– after VeeDub eventually got around to bringing over the current gen. As Berkowitz will tell you, they would have sold even more uber-Golfs if the model was anything like reliable, if VW dealers weren’t such NSFWs and the starting price was a few thousand lower. OK, the Saturn Astra flopped, the Audi A3 just stood there, watching and even the hideous, horrendous U.S.-spec Ford Focus sells best in its four-door iteration. Hmm. What was I saying? Ah yes, the Euro-Focus RS. They’re starting to build them in Germany, and pistonheads on the other side of the pond are all abuzz. John Fleming, FoMoCo’s Europe’s CEO stokes the stoked. “We’ve had a huge amount of interest in this model from the loyal army of Ford RS enthusiasts as well as potential customers who have never owned an RS before. I am confident that they will fall for it the moment they get behind the wheel.” Which, for us in the U.S., is never.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
300HP? Sorry, that just doesn’t fit over here, Mr. Farago. We’re rolling back the warming planet, not driving like mad through Dubyaland, and 300HP just sounds way too much like fun for our new zombie programming.
Hope and change!
God forbid Ford sell a good car here.
I bet you anything that Focus has a more sport suspension that Ford’s sports car sold here.
That car would sticker for at least $30k over here. Obviously our current Focus is a turd, but how many of you would honestly choose this over anything else in the price range?
danms6: same is true of the hottest or the hot GTIs and Civic SIs, and they seem to do just fine. Ford can do the same.
Or not. I remember a Ford exec saying that if the Contour failed in the US, they’d never do this “world platform” thing again. I bet there are plenty of folks worrying about this in Dearborn.
Boo. This would put a hot hatch and a bargain muscle car (Mustang) in the same showroom. God forbid they want to attract customers.
Does anyone know the logistics and legal considerations for bringing a Euro spec car over to the US?
I read in CAR, or was it EVO, that the Focus RS was still going to be a FWD machine. Bugger. That is fine though, that car looks like so much fun I would consider it for a purchase. Lime Green paint and all.
Sajeev: The GTI comparison is valid, but cars like the SI and MS3 play in a lower price range. If they can bring it to that level then I’m all for it. And while they’re at it, maybe put the same sheet metal on the current Focus?
Let’s not forget, guys, that this car would be lucky to produce that much power even on our premium fuel.
Why Ford wont bring over some cool cars is beyond me. I was in a Ford dealership recently and was very unimpressed with all the pastel-colored cars with huge “Look we are fuel effeciant!” stickers covering every window. They did not even have a cool mustang on display. They still don’t get it.
Fuel effeciancy is all well and good but when my 2004 Bi-Turbo A6 S-Line gets the same fuel economy on the highway as my 2005 Focus did, something is amiss.
Is Mexico one of the 20 markets? Ouch, then.
Subaru was known for boring cars and the WRX was a hit. This could make people flock to the Ford dealership and change the brand image. Even if they don’t sell many it will make people go to the dealer and become more accustomed with the ford product line and that is worth a lot.
300hp to the front wheels, or to *all* wheels?
That will determine whether or not I care.
Vorenus: FWD
@ Vorenus: The RS sends all that power through the front wheels. It does have a Quaife limited-slip, which could make for some interesting vehicle dynamics under certain driving conditions. Might want to leave it at home if the weather is rainy or snowy.
It is 300 HP to the front wheels. I remember reading from a previous post made on TTAC that Ford is using a Quaife Automatic Torque Biasing LSD, and a specially designed MacPherson strut suspension at the front called RevoKnuckle which also helps keep in check all those horses going to the front wheels. Sounds all well and good but I WISH this was RWD.
300HP to the front wheels of any car (Quaife or not) makes for a torque-steering nightmare. But if anybody wants that all they have to do is buy an MS3 and tweak it a bit. They’ll also get a great looking and more practical car with the extra pair of doors.
Ford is definitely clueless, but it wouldn’t matter if they brought the RS to the US or not. It would still deliver less for more ($), and that isn’t a formula for success… in any economy.
Screw 300hp and screw the RS badge. Give it about 230hp, call it the SVT (since the vast majority of Americans don’t understand the lineage of Ford’s RS models anyway), price it around $20k (and up)…voila. 230-250hp is enough for a FWD compact. Sell it like that and let the tuners worry about the numbers it puts out.
OK, will someone please explain this to me? I somewhat understand when America had different crash and emission standards than Europe but now I can’t figure it out. What would be so wrong in bringing over 50 or 500 of these? We all know that NONE of the factories worldwide are at full capacity and I have been corrected concerning tariffs, so why not make the sale? I don’t mean to single out Ford either. GM, Toyota, and the rest have interesting cars that are already built – the investment has been made. Put them on a boat, deliver them to a showroom, stick on a premium price tag and post a waiting list. GM could solve some of its UAW problems this way bringing in rebadged Opels like they do with Vauxhalls in the UK and Hyundis like they do Chevrolets in Europe. Why is this so difficult for companies this big, with so many viable resources, to deliver decent cars that people want at a decent price?
OK, the Saturn Astra flopped,
GM priced it too high and gave it a mediocre powertrain. After they cut the price, it started selling quite well, at least in Canada.
the Audi A3 just stood there
Price. You can put four rings on a Golf, but you can’t make it think hide the fact that the GTI is almost as good for less money. Unless you have a burning need for the 3.2 Quattro (and are willing to walk past the A4 to pay for it) there’s no incentive here.
, watching and even the hideous, horrendous U.S.-spec Ford Focus sells best in its four-door iteration.
That has more to do with the rise of fuel prices and the crash of the market. Also, Focus is, sadly, the best domestic compact car, excepting the less-available, more expensive, less efficient Astra. Drive it back to back with an equivalent Cobalt (no, not the niche-market SS) and tell me why you’d buy the Chevy?.
You’re right that hatches don’t sell well. We got some truly awful hatchbacks in the 1980s, and I think that memories of the likes of the Omni, Chevette, Aspire, Festiva, Pony, Excel and Le Mans are going to take a while to seep out of our collective conscious.
That said, the Focus RS would demand a premium, and would be up against some serious competition in a saturated market. Considering that the MazdaSpeed 3 is close to the same car with similar abilities but without a parent automaker that’s bleeding money, what’s the concern for enthusiasts? Buy the Mazda (or wait until they bump the spec a little) and be done with it.
All I know is I’d really prefer a two-door coupe or hatch a lot more than a four-door sedan. I’d love a sporty euro-spec Ford Focus with two doors. If you want to lower power output to 230 and call it an SVT, fine. I’d still buy if the price is right. But, from what I understand, Ford currently is only planning to bring four-door models of the euro Focus to the U.S. Please, Mr. Mulally, potential customers who want sporty cars don’t necessarily want the Mustang or a sport-option trim level on the four-door Fusion.
FWD? Ouch. *slowly backs away*
300 horses and wrong-wheel-drive? Thanks Europe but no thanks, you can keep your Focii. We’re certainly stoked to be getting the new Fiesta however, it’s just a crying shame that we have to wait so goddamn long for it.
If you want this car now, go buy the Mazdaspeed 3. Same chassis, probably a slicker fit/finish, and nearly the same output (265 hp? 280 torque? Can’t recall, something like that).
Anyways, it’s not like you’re going to notice the extra 35 hp through all the torque steer.
Has there been any published reports of how this car actually drives? Last I read, Ford trumpeted the differential and new suspension as a revolutionary breakthrough in FWD technology, eliminating ill effects like torque steer and shattering the glass ceiling of horsepower limits. Has anybody anywhere been able to find out the truth?
300 horses and wrong-wheel-drive?
Repeat after me: if you want three hundred horsepower and don’t want to either pay through the nose (1-Series), buy used, or accept a crude chassis and iffy fit and finish (Mustang), this is the only way to go. They have to use a commodity chassis to make the costs work.
What, you were expecting them to engineer a rear- or all-wheel-drive platform from the ground up just for a zero-margin sports sedan?
Besides, the torque steer is probably not all that bad. The Mazda3 has a similar chassis and it’s fine. Go drive a 99-to-02 Saab 9-3 Viggen, then come talk to me about torque steer.
“You’re right that hatches don’t sell well. We got some truly awful hatchbacks in the 1980s, and I think that memories of the likes of the Omni, Chevette, Aspire, Festiva, Pony, Excel and Le Mans are going to take a while to seep out of our collective conscious.” I think that’s an urban legend. Some of those cars didn’t sell well because they were crappy, not because they were hatches. My wife and I agree that one of our favorite cars from the past was our Omni GLH Turbo. Great carrying capacity, good driving dynamics and it could suck the doors off most other cars of the era.
Eh, the Astra then brought over here was too slow, too pricey and had no support for mp3 players — if they’d fixed two of those, I would have bought it instead of the Versa (which had a better price and support for mp3 players.) I would have gone right to the 4-door GTI if I didn’t value reliability.
And the A3? Too much money, period, and too big. Yet I see them all over the place here in LA.
Does anyone know the logistics and legal considerations for bringing a Euro spec car over to the US?
The legal considerations meaning how well a chassis that consistently receives five-stars on European crash-tests (since Mark 2… now we’re at 2.5) will fare on US crash tests?
The only problem is logistics. And whether Ford will be willing to import the car whole or will insist on using the expensive local labor that keeps them selling the Mark 1 well past its sell-by date… and which has stolen money from the design department, which had to resort to pimp-tastic teenagers to restyle their new, blinging Mark 1.01 Focus.
—-
As for torque-steer… who cares? That’s called “character”… having driven the Mark 2.5 recently, I believe the chassis can safely take another 200 horses over the 160 horse spec I drove, even with the standard spec suspension. And with the revo-knuckle, it ought to be spectacular.
The Mazda3 may be similar, but if you’ve driven both cars back to back, there’s no way you would say that it was just as good. The Focus has a stiffer chassis (allowing them the same stability even with a softer suspension), a better steering rack, and a more sublime suspension set-up.
Yes, I know they’re near-identical twins, but with one twin on the track team and the other into professional mixed martial arts, they’re easy enough to tell apart.
Whether such observations carry over to the MS3 and the Focus RS, only time and (eventual) comparison articles will tell.
@niky :
The Mazda3 may be similar, but if you’ve driven both cars back to back, there’s no way you would say that it was just as good. The Focus has a stiffer chassis (allowing them the same stability even with a softer suspension), a better steering rack, and a more sublime suspension set-up.
I have driven several Euro-Foci and an Euro-spec Mazda3, and they don’t feel even remotely the same.
Where the Mazda is slightly bumpy, the Focus was serene, steering feel in the Focus is better, seats are better, satnav is better, the Sony stereo in the Focus blows the Mazda’s Bose out of the water, there’s more room on the back seat, trunk space is 33% more than in the 3, it’s easier to load because the hatch is so wide…