2016 Ford Focus RS review – Roadshow

Nov 2016

The Good Superb handling and power mixed with remarkable practicality.

The Bad Ride quality leaves a little to be desired when just cruising.

The Bottom Line For this money, you won’t find a better hot hatch in the US.

Finally, this one’s for us. Ford has been making hotted-up versions of its compact cars for decades, teasing American buyers with machines like the Escort RS and RS Cosworth. They were fast, they were affordable and none of them were available in the US.

That changes now. This is the $36,000 Focus RS, the fastest RS ever to wear a blue oval on the nose and perhaps the hottest of hot hatches on the market today. It’s fast, no doubt about that, but what about the rest? Let’s dive in and find out.

Powering around the track

The Focus RS feels remarkably planted on the track.

Nick Miotke/Roadshow

The heart of the Focus RS is a 2.3-liter inline four-cylinder engine making a nicely symmetrical 350 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque. Also symmetrical? How that power gets through the ground. After a trip through a six-speed manual transmission (there’s no auto or DCT available on Focus), the torque is routed to all four wheels via an advanced AWD system.

A central differential directs more power to the rear wheels than the front, providing a lively feel, while clutch-type differentials at either end vector torque from left to right as well. In other words, the car can send its power where it wants to ensure great handling.

When flirting with the limit the car is just as responsive to adjustments made with your right foot as those made with your hands on the wheel.

On the road, and even more so on the track, this results in a car that reacts differently than what you might be expecting — at least, it was certainly different from what I was expecting. I’ve spent a lot of time driving Subarus and Audis and other AWD powerhouses, and of course the prevailing trend is to understeer wide when pushed.

The Focus RS, however, has an eager, direct response when driven hard. Yes, it too will wallow in understeer if you get into the corner too hot, but it’s never of the terminal sort. Simple, light corrections get the nose headed in the right direction, and when flirting with the limit the car is just as responsive to adjustments made with your right foot as those made with your hands on the wheel.

This is helped by a suspension that’s well stiffer than even the Focus ST, with two-way adaptive dampers situated on all four corners. On their standard stiffness the car is, indeed, quite stiff. Toggle into track mode and they get even more resistant to movement, adding even more sharpness to the feel of the car.

Yes, this is a tall hatchback and with a fair bit of body roll through the corners, but the feel is still legitimately, remarkably good.

Drift mode

For those times when you want to feel less planted, enter Drift Mode!

Nick Miotke/Roadshow

I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the Focus RS’s Drift Mode, though I confess I think it’s more of a gimmick than a good way for Ford’s engineers to spend their time. That said, there is a bit of a method to their madness.

Set the car in drift mode and disable the traction control and the car does feel immediately different — different, but in a decidedly bad way. The suspension moves to its softest setting, so the RS flops about more than usual, and power sent to the rear wheels is set to maximum. This results in a car that feels very, very unstable: perfect for drifting.