I just got my new 2017 Focus RS two weeks ago. "2017" or "Mk3", depending on what side of the Atlantic you live on.
The car has a 350 PS turbocharged EcoBoost 2.3L engine with 9.4:1 compression ratio, an engine that is remarkable in many respects.
First, I have to say that I owned a Sierra Cosworth 4x4 and two large-turbo Escort RS Cosworth, the first of which had an international-spec Mountune Group A rally engine (MTC221, for the experts, with 8.8:1 CR), complete with the big RS500 intercooler, the MAR-M 247 shaft, the 8-injectors WRC inlet, and a Pectel T6 (#637) that I mapped myself from scratch on a 1500hp engine dyno.
That Cosworth YB engine made 400 PS @ 7000 and 550 Nm of torque @ 3800 RPM with good response and excellent drivability, thanks in part to the A/R 55 housing from Turbo Technics. For those who don't speak "SI", that's 405 lb-ft, and the boost briefly peaked at 2.4 bar / 35 psi.
For those who care, the engine dyno was one of three at Heini Mader Racing Components, a then renowned Swiss outfit that assembled and tested every BMW Megatron F1 engines, the famous 1300+ HP motors from the (first) turbo F1 era, after having serviced and maintained all Ford Cosworth DFV V8 F1 engines for years. At some point, Mader ran the entire F1 grid except Ferrari so it was quite special to be behind those walls.
We installed my Cosworth YB in dyno cell #3, and my dyno driver was Fabrice Capucci was just stunned when the engine started on the first try, after two days of work to install it. We did the run-in and then base map on the dyno (that part took about 4 hours), then I spend countless hours on the road to fine-tune every aspect of the engin's reponse. I've also mapped STi (road) engines and several Evo Group N rally engines (MoTeC), a Mountune 2.0L N/A Escort Group A rally engine (Pectel), and an Escort WRC engine (also Pectel), all of which became event or category leaders and sometimes winners.
I may write a post about engine mapping at some point in the future, as time allows, as well as discuss powertrain and drivetrain control strategies such as open-loop and closed-loop fueling (alpha-N, MAP, MAF...), closed-loop boost control (MAP, PRP, turbo speed...), anti-lag systems, water injection and ICCS, launch control, gear shift strategies, and 2WD and 4WD traction control systems with "5th wheel" such as optical-flow sensors, ground-speed radars, and crank acceleration-based strategies. In anyone is interested, let me know in the comments.
My second Escort Cosworth, which is in mild-trim engine-wise at 1.4 bar / 20 psi, is still well and alive although it does not get much use as I'm currently a Swiss expat working on OS kernels at a giant software firm in the U.S. Pacific North-West.
That car has an extraordinary, one-off suspension built by Reiger Racing Suspensions, based on their 5062 damper, for which I designed the top mounts for my car.
Those folks are the real deal. They win everything at the world level on dirt today, no matter the number of wheels, from motocross to RX to rally-raid to WRC, and they make the best tarmac suspension that can be brought. I'll definitely write about these in the future, and I'll go straight to talk to Reiger if/when I make plans for a new and improved suspension for the Focus RS. The good news is M-Sport just started to use the Focus RS as recce car this year, after retiring the Volvos they used in recent years... so guess who made a gravel and tarmac suspension for the Focus RS road car? Come September, I'll seriously consider the feasibility of a Reiger suspension for my new Focus.
Please do not confuse Reiger Racing Suspensions with Rieger, a German outfit making tuning body kits for road cars.
Back on topic, the Focus RS engine is really great. It has a very good response thanks to its modern twin-scroll turbo (peak torque @ 2500 RPM !) while its dual variable cams allow the power band to extend all the way to 6000 RPM, resulting in a very docile and drivable engine with great throttle response (in S mode at least). Very sweet.
The Focus RS has several powertrain and drivetrain modes that confuse the hell out of most people out there...
The engine has a Normal and a Sports mode. From what I see, the only remarkable difference is the throttle response curve: since the throttle is electrically controlled (aka fly-by-wire) the engine control unit (ECU) can decide what butterfly angle to give in response to the throttle pedal input and other parameters, like the engine speed, the current gear, the "throttle derivative" i.e. the speed at with the throttle pedal is depressed, and probably a few other things, like the current drive mode, and input from the ESC which has an idea of the available grip and the car's attitude.
In Normal mode, a relatively large pedal input results in a relatively small and slow change in throttle angle, while in Sports mode the throttle response is more direct. From the outside, I think that's about it, save for the exhaust noise, which also has a "sports" mode with a bypass valve, that goes together with the engine sports mode. There is no perceptible difference at WOT: you get the same boost and horsepower in both modes with the throttle fully open, although I can speculate the engine might run a little leaner at partial throttle & cruise loads in Normal mode, to save a bit of fuel (I did not check this) and the exhaust makes less noise.
Then the suspension has a Normal and a Sports mode. The RS's suspension will be the subject of another post. Let's just say that I understand the choices they made, even if I do not agree with them.
For the experts, the OEM suspension has relatively soft springs (40N/mm front) and very stiff low-speed damping, then not enough high-speed damping. This explains why the car feels so hard, and yet the has a fair amount of body movement and becomes scaringly spongy at high vehicle speed.
You can hit the front bump stops on average roads with a little determination, my car bottomed up a few times in normal driving. The rear settings are comparatively better with a 44N/mm spring supporting less weight. They also raised the ride height at the rear a bit, so the car sits slightly nose-down and this helps creates its tail-happy character.
In Sports mode, the high-speed compression and rebound damping become stiffer, which helps control the body movements but now the increased overall stiffness negatively affects the grip in all but the smoothest surfaces. The car is much less spongy at high speed but now it makes small lateral jumps under hard cornering and slides very unevenly due to far too much vertical stiffness.
For those who wonder, when speaking suspensions, "speed" refers to the damper's shaft speed, more on this in a later post, and before people gets all excited about the RS's suspension problems, the car, in completely stock form, corners at 1.1-1.2G in 90 km/h (60mph) corners on its OE Michelin Pilot Super Sport street tires, provided you know what you are doing - this puts its straight in the supercar category.
The RS's AWD transmission has a Normal, a Sports mode, and a Drift mode. The operations of the transmission will require its own post. Let's just say it has a great active limited-slip read differential (which, technically, is not a differential, but still acts like one), and an open front differential which apparently gets some help from the front brakes if one of the front wheels starts spinning.
Finally, the electronic stability control (ESC) has a Normal mode, a Sports mode, and can be turned off entirely (so that's three operating modes).
Most of those modes can be turned ON and OFF independently (some combinations require pressing several buttons several times). If my arithmetic is correct, 2 engine modes times 2 suspension modes times 3 AWD modes times three ESC modes = 36 possible combinations, or "modes", although some combinations are not available to the driver: for example Drift AWD mode implies Sports Engine mode: you can not have the slow throttle response and the hard rear-diff locking together, but you can still have the ESC in Normal, Sports or Off in Drift mode, as well as Normal or Sports suspensions. That's already 6 different Drift flavors, plus 6 for Track, etc, etc, count with me - I have highlighted the default configuration in each mode, while the other sub-modes can be obtained by tweaking the ESC and suspension settings, which are independently accessible:
Some of my old videos: my Escort Cosworth on ice, here in a Subaru on a frozen lake. Can you spell Left Foot Braking in a 4x4 rally car, and test-riving a 4x4 rally car on a track. So, some driving experience incl. 16 years of rallying (10 seconds of my first rally, back in 2001 in a FWD Ford Escort with a Mountune engine, and an onboard from my second rally in the same car, which had an horrible, horrible Quaife gearbox and diff). There are quite a few Peugeot 207 S2000 videos on my channel, too. Nothing recorded in the Focus RS yet.
Before anyone asks, do I have plans to beef up the RS, like power upgrades? Probably not. I'll certainly address a couple of things, mainly the suspension and perhaps add a plated front differential, if I can find one. I can write a post about differentials of anyone asks, Torsen, Quaife ATB, Viscous, ZF (plated) and why you want this last one and not any the first three, with a few words about ramp angles, preload, and how to drive the car once it has the proper diffs. I think the engine as good as-is, what limits this car is its suspension, not a lack of power.
I'd love to find a way to keep the cornering lights on the Focus RS, but without the directional headlights, which are very disorienting when making fast steering input in night driving. With the selector set to "road lights," the directional feature is OFF (thank goodness!) but so are the cornering lights. Moreover, the fog lights cannot be used as a substitute for cornering lights, as they turn off when using the high position on the road lights - bummer!
In Auto lights mode, you get the corner lights and the directional light, which is great, but only as long as you have the 4 wheels firmly on the ground, i.e. when you are driving slowly.
Other than that, the car is great as-is: it leaves practically everything standing still in stock form: all it takes is a couple of corners...
Those who want more straight-line acceleration and sheer track-day or autocross/slalom joy should probably get another car, something lighter, like a Lotus Exige V6 (0-60 in 3.7s in stock form). If you are serious about amateur racing, get the Exige V6 Cup version and it will be everything a Focus RS - or for that matter, an Evo, an STi, a Mustang GT (or whatever, for our U.S. friends) - will never be: sharp as a tack with devilish cornering, braking, and acceleration abilities.
The Focus RS is a European car, designed and built in Germany. It is suitable for everyday use and is all about corners, I mean 90 degrees type of corners and other serious turns, that the car can take at a speed that defies all competition in its segment.
The car has good brakes at any rate for a road car, with soft pads that have a very good cold bite, and that seems easy on the rotors, a reasonably direct steering - two turns lock-to-lock, good suspension kinematics keeping the tire working pretty well despite the bad damping choices, a good and smooth gearbox, the clutch (feel, bite) is surprisingly good too. Overall it's a great and very satisfying road car and a strong contender in its market segment.
Among the negatives is a not-so-precise steering, after all, probably due to some soft bushing around the track control arms and the suspension top mounts. The 235ZR19 rubbers all round are certainly wide enough, and with the compliance in the parts that connect the bodyshell to the road, the car wants to go left (or right) as soon as you hit the brakes, and also pulls slightly sideways under hard acceleration and then pulls the other way on sharp lift-off, probably due to some compliance in the (rubber?) connection between the rear subframe and the bodyshell. I'm not sure about all this, but suffice to say it's not confidence-inspiring when driving hard on the bumpy stuff. At all.
My old Escort Cosworth as bigger brakes still (AP Racing 356x32 with 6 titanium pistons, straight from a works Escort Maxi), front and rear plated diffs, a short ratio gearbox sourced from Romain Oppliger in Italy, with 50/50 front/rear torque split, and a very modern and extraordinary Reiger suspension. Downhill, and on fast twisty and bumpy roads it will be quicker than the stock Focus RS for sure, uphill the Focus will likely be in front thanks to its modern and superior engine and its very wide power band. Just to put some context, on a bumpy downhill road where I know my Escort can go flat out without any concern, I have to back off and slow down (and brake in the middle of a straight) in the Focus RS because the front suspension is bottoming out and the car makes zig-zags that make me believe it would not stay on the road if I insist. That is not good.
Also, I question the choice of the 19 inches wheels with series 35 tires. I think 18" with 235/40 would have given a little more headroom for potholes and bumps and would have been more appropriate for this car as OE. I'm definitely not buying another set of 19" when my RS wheels start to become square due to bumpy tarmac and need replacement.
By the way, Romain - the guy from which I sourced my Escort's gearbox internals - is a crazy guy who makes no less crazy Cosworth YB engines for road-going Escort RS Cosworth. Those who don't know the car can watch this video and get a feel of what we had in Europe since back in 1993: the car made 224PS in stock mode and could be easily tuned to about 335PS with a new chip (from Graham Goode or Moutune), bigger injectors & fuel pump, and a free-flow exhaust, and made about 4.5s 0-100 km/h (60 mph) in that trim without any serious mechanical upgrades.
In a sense, the 2016-2017 Focus RS is the one (and only) direct successor of the 1993 large turbo Escort RS Cosworth 4x4, there was nothing in between (sorry, the various FWD Focus cannot compare). The one in the following video is particularly nasty (and not my personal cup of tea.) The video could also be titled: why you don't want too much horsepower, lol.
Back to the Focus RS and its cornering abilities, if you are not doing anything explicitly, as a driver, to take advantage of the active rear differential, you are not driving the car properly, and whatever cornering perf you get out of it will solely be limited by your (in)ability to effectively use the transmission, the major asset and differentiator of this car. For straight-line acceleration, the RS is just a decently-powered kind-of heavy car. If 1/4 mile is your main thing, get something else!
Enough of an introduction - Until next time, drive safely and, above all, STAY ON THE ROAD!
The car has a 350 PS turbocharged EcoBoost 2.3L engine with 9.4:1 compression ratio, an engine that is remarkable in many respects.
First, I have to say that I owned a Sierra Cosworth 4x4 and two large-turbo Escort RS Cosworth, the first of which had an international-spec Mountune Group A rally engine (MTC221, for the experts, with 8.8:1 CR), complete with the big RS500 intercooler, the MAR-M 247 shaft, the 8-injectors WRC inlet, and a Pectel T6 (#637) that I mapped myself from scratch on a 1500hp engine dyno.
That Cosworth YB engine made 400 PS @ 7000 and 550 Nm of torque @ 3800 RPM with good response and excellent drivability, thanks in part to the A/R 55 housing from Turbo Technics. For those who don't speak "SI", that's 405 lb-ft, and the boost briefly peaked at 2.4 bar / 35 psi.
For those who care, the engine dyno was one of three at Heini Mader Racing Components, a then renowned Swiss outfit that assembled and tested every BMW Megatron F1 engines, the famous 1300+ HP motors from the (first) turbo F1 era, after having serviced and maintained all Ford Cosworth DFV V8 F1 engines for years. At some point, Mader ran the entire F1 grid except Ferrari so it was quite special to be behind those walls.
We installed my Cosworth YB in dyno cell #3, and my dyno driver was Fabrice Capucci was just stunned when the engine started on the first try, after two days of work to install it. We did the run-in and then base map on the dyno (that part took about 4 hours), then I spend countless hours on the road to fine-tune every aspect of the engin's reponse. I've also mapped STi (road) engines and several Evo Group N rally engines (MoTeC), a Mountune 2.0L N/A Escort Group A rally engine (Pectel), and an Escort WRC engine (also Pectel), all of which became event or category leaders and sometimes winners.
I may write a post about engine mapping at some point in the future, as time allows, as well as discuss powertrain and drivetrain control strategies such as open-loop and closed-loop fueling (alpha-N, MAP, MAF...), closed-loop boost control (MAP, PRP, turbo speed...), anti-lag systems, water injection and ICCS, launch control, gear shift strategies, and 2WD and 4WD traction control systems with "5th wheel" such as optical-flow sensors, ground-speed radars, and crank acceleration-based strategies. In anyone is interested, let me know in the comments.
That car has an extraordinary, one-off suspension built by Reiger Racing Suspensions, based on their 5062 damper, for which I designed the top mounts for my car.
Please do not confuse Reiger Racing Suspensions with Rieger, a German outfit making tuning body kits for road cars.
Back on topic, the Focus RS engine is really great. It has a very good response thanks to its modern twin-scroll turbo (peak torque @ 2500 RPM !) while its dual variable cams allow the power band to extend all the way to 6000 RPM, resulting in a very docile and drivable engine with great throttle response (in S mode at least). Very sweet.
The Focus RS has several powertrain and drivetrain modes that confuse the hell out of most people out there...
The engine has a Normal and a Sports mode. From what I see, the only remarkable difference is the throttle response curve: since the throttle is electrically controlled (aka fly-by-wire) the engine control unit (ECU) can decide what butterfly angle to give in response to the throttle pedal input and other parameters, like the engine speed, the current gear, the "throttle derivative" i.e. the speed at with the throttle pedal is depressed, and probably a few other things, like the current drive mode, and input from the ESC which has an idea of the available grip and the car's attitude.
In Normal mode, a relatively large pedal input results in a relatively small and slow change in throttle angle, while in Sports mode the throttle response is more direct. From the outside, I think that's about it, save for the exhaust noise, which also has a "sports" mode with a bypass valve, that goes together with the engine sports mode. There is no perceptible difference at WOT: you get the same boost and horsepower in both modes with the throttle fully open, although I can speculate the engine might run a little leaner at partial throttle & cruise loads in Normal mode, to save a bit of fuel (I did not check this) and the exhaust makes less noise.
Then the suspension has a Normal and a Sports mode. The RS's suspension will be the subject of another post. Let's just say that I understand the choices they made, even if I do not agree with them.
For the experts, the OEM suspension has relatively soft springs (40N/mm front) and very stiff low-speed damping, then not enough high-speed damping. This explains why the car feels so hard, and yet the has a fair amount of body movement and becomes scaringly spongy at high vehicle speed.
You can hit the front bump stops on average roads with a little determination, my car bottomed up a few times in normal driving. The rear settings are comparatively better with a 44N/mm spring supporting less weight. They also raised the ride height at the rear a bit, so the car sits slightly nose-down and this helps creates its tail-happy character.
In Sports mode, the high-speed compression and rebound damping become stiffer, which helps control the body movements but now the increased overall stiffness negatively affects the grip in all but the smoothest surfaces. The car is much less spongy at high speed but now it makes small lateral jumps under hard cornering and slides very unevenly due to far too much vertical stiffness.
For those who wonder, when speaking suspensions, "speed" refers to the damper's shaft speed, more on this in a later post, and before people gets all excited about the RS's suspension problems, the car, in completely stock form, corners at 1.1-1.2G in 90 km/h (60mph) corners on its OE Michelin Pilot Super Sport street tires, provided you know what you are doing - this puts its straight in the supercar category.
The RS's AWD transmission has a Normal, a Sports mode, and a Drift mode. The operations of the transmission will require its own post. Let's just say it has a great active limited-slip read differential (which, technically, is not a differential, but still acts like one), and an open front differential which apparently gets some help from the front brakes if one of the front wheels starts spinning.
Finally, the electronic stability control (ESC) has a Normal mode, a Sports mode, and can be turned off entirely (so that's three operating modes).
Most of those modes can be turned ON and OFF independently (some combinations require pressing several buttons several times). If my arithmetic is correct, 2 engine modes times 2 suspension modes times 3 AWD modes times three ESC modes = 36 possible combinations, or "modes", although some combinations are not available to the driver: for example Drift AWD mode implies Sports Engine mode: you can not have the slow throttle response and the hard rear-diff locking together, but you can still have the ESC in Normal, Sports or Off in Drift mode, as well as Normal or Sports suspensions. That's already 6 different Drift flavors, plus 6 for Track, etc, etc, count with me - I have highlighted the default configuration in each mode, while the other sub-modes can be obtained by tweaking the ESC and suspension settings, which are independently accessible:
Normal Mode
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Normal Suspension, Normal ESC (Power-on Default)
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Normal Suspension, Sport ESC
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Normal Suspension, ESC Disabled
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Sport Suspension, Normal ESC
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Sport Suspension, Sport ESC
- Normal Engine, Normal AWD, Sport Suspension, ESC Disabled
Sport Mode
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Normal Suspension, Normal ESC (Sports Mode)
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Normal Suspension, Sport ESC
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Normal Suspension, ESC Disabled
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Sport Suspension, Normal ESC
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Sport Suspension, Sport ESC
- Sport Engine, Sport AWD, Sport Suspension, ESC Disabled
Track Mode
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Normal Suspension, Normal ESC
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Normal Suspension, Sport ESC
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Normal Suspension, ESC Disabled
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Sport Suspension, Normal ESC
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Sport Suspension, Sport ESC (Track Mode)
- Sports Engine, Sports AWD, Sport Suspension, ESC Disabled
Drift Mode
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Normal Suspension, Normal ESC
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Normal Suspension, Sport ESC (Drift Mode)
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Normal Suspension, ESC Disabled
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Sport Suspension, Normal ESC
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Sport Suspension, Sport ESC
- Sports Engine, Drift AWD, Sport Suspension, ESC Disabled
That's 24 distinct driver-accessible "modes" you can put your Focus RS into. There are two more controlled areas, namely the steering assistance and the exhaust, but those go together with the other modes and are not independently accessible:
More on all of the above in future posts, in particular, how to drive a 4x4 sports or race car, which seems to be one of the greatest mystery of the Internet. Many people talk about "torque vectoring" but few seems to have a clue regarding what to do with it, how it affects your driving.- Normal Modes: Normal Steering, Normal Exhaust
- Sport Modes: Sport Steering, Sport Exhaust
- Track Modes: Sport Steering, Sport Exhaust
- Drift Modes: Normal Steering, Sport Exhaust
- Normal - the safe power-on default, meant to keep you on the road. If you are in a hairpin with 3/4 turn of steering wheel in 2nd gear and fully open the throttle in S mode, nothing happens. The car gently accelerates and the ESC icon blinks on your dash. You can feel that the throttle is entirely decoupled from the throttle pedal and driven by the electronics, not by you. You basically tells the car "please accelerate" and the car responds in a very gentle manner while trying to stay within the grip and traction envelope at all times.
- Sports - with the orange ESC wiggles icon lit on the speedometer, meant to make you think you are driving on the limit. In the same situation as above, the throttle opens a bit more in response to your input and the car accelerates slightly more, in a concert of ABS-sounding brake buzzing, as the ESC brakes the inner wheels to help steer the car into the corner. A little wheel slip and yaw angle are allowed in this mode, and this is enough to induce panic (or grin) in most drivers.
- Off - Orange icon and orange [i] on the tiny central screen - Press and hold the ESC Off button 5 seconds to turn ESC entirely off, and turn your car into a dangerous little beast. Here, the throttle opens as you depress the throttle pedal, and, as the rear diff locks as the AWD understands - from the steering angle and other sensors - that you are in a corner, the tail of the car will happily go outwards as soon as the boost starts building and there is enough power to break traction. Since the front wheel are pointing into the corner, as they should, you will - for an instant - achieve that perfect turn that only a true 4x4 is capable of: front wheels in - steering the nose into the corner, rear wheels out - turning around it, with all four wheels spinning a little, and all with a bit of yaw.
The problem is, an instant later, and before you can say f*ck, you will likely half-spin and get off the road, and/or hit something on the inside of the corner, unless you have a perfect steering wheel handling technique and know what to do, with the proper level of anticipation. Oh, and no, counter-lock and other natural reactions are not the answer. The car will have picked enough momentum to continue on its own like a brick. There are plenty of videos of "supercar fails & crashes" on YouTube that perfectly illustrate that particular moment, and there is no warning: by the time you actually say f*ck, it's already too late. Don't try this, you will break your toy and possibly hurt someone. There are many ways to get that wrong, throttle too soon and the car will push straight, throttle too late and the car is already pushing straight, enter too slow, then apply too much throttle, and nothing happens for a short while, then the tail and front suddenly swap positions - just like your friends in their powerful rear-wheel drive, then you may counter-lock (far too late and far too much) and you will crash on the outside just after you lift, plus countless other ways. If you don't know exactly what I'm talking about, keep the ESC on!
Some of my old videos: my Escort Cosworth on ice, here in a Subaru on a frozen lake. Can you spell Left Foot Braking in a 4x4 rally car, and test-riving a 4x4 rally car on a track. So, some driving experience incl. 16 years of rallying (10 seconds of my first rally, back in 2001 in a FWD Ford Escort with a Mountune engine, and an onboard from my second rally in the same car, which had an horrible, horrible Quaife gearbox and diff). There are quite a few Peugeot 207 S2000 videos on my channel, too. Nothing recorded in the Focus RS yet.
Before anyone asks, do I have plans to beef up the RS, like power upgrades? Probably not. I'll certainly address a couple of things, mainly the suspension and perhaps add a plated front differential, if I can find one. I can write a post about differentials of anyone asks, Torsen, Quaife ATB, Viscous, ZF (plated) and why you want this last one and not any the first three, with a few words about ramp angles, preload, and how to drive the car once it has the proper diffs. I think the engine as good as-is, what limits this car is its suspension, not a lack of power.
I'd love to find a way to keep the cornering lights on the Focus RS, but without the directional headlights, which are very disorienting when making fast steering input in night driving. With the selector set to "road lights," the directional feature is OFF (thank goodness!) but so are the cornering lights. Moreover, the fog lights cannot be used as a substitute for cornering lights, as they turn off when using the high position on the road lights - bummer!
In Auto lights mode, you get the corner lights and the directional light, which is great, but only as long as you have the 4 wheels firmly on the ground, i.e. when you are driving slowly.
Other than that, the car is great as-is: it leaves practically everything standing still in stock form: all it takes is a couple of corners...
Those who want more straight-line acceleration and sheer track-day or autocross/slalom joy should probably get another car, something lighter, like a Lotus Exige V6 (0-60 in 3.7s in stock form). If you are serious about amateur racing, get the Exige V6 Cup version and it will be everything a Focus RS - or for that matter, an Evo, an STi, a Mustang GT (or whatever, for our U.S. friends) - will never be: sharp as a tack with devilish cornering, braking, and acceleration abilities.
The Focus RS is a European car, designed and built in Germany. It is suitable for everyday use and is all about corners, I mean 90 degrees type of corners and other serious turns, that the car can take at a speed that defies all competition in its segment.
The car has good brakes at any rate for a road car, with soft pads that have a very good cold bite, and that seems easy on the rotors, a reasonably direct steering - two turns lock-to-lock, good suspension kinematics keeping the tire working pretty well despite the bad damping choices, a good and smooth gearbox, the clutch (feel, bite) is surprisingly good too. Overall it's a great and very satisfying road car and a strong contender in its market segment.
Among the negatives is a not-so-precise steering, after all, probably due to some soft bushing around the track control arms and the suspension top mounts. The 235ZR19 rubbers all round are certainly wide enough, and with the compliance in the parts that connect the bodyshell to the road, the car wants to go left (or right) as soon as you hit the brakes, and also pulls slightly sideways under hard acceleration and then pulls the other way on sharp lift-off, probably due to some compliance in the (rubber?) connection between the rear subframe and the bodyshell. I'm not sure about all this, but suffice to say it's not confidence-inspiring when driving hard on the bumpy stuff. At all.
My old Escort Cosworth as bigger brakes still (AP Racing 356x32 with 6 titanium pistons, straight from a works Escort Maxi), front and rear plated diffs, a short ratio gearbox sourced from Romain Oppliger in Italy, with 50/50 front/rear torque split, and a very modern and extraordinary Reiger suspension. Downhill, and on fast twisty and bumpy roads it will be quicker than the stock Focus RS for sure, uphill the Focus will likely be in front thanks to its modern and superior engine and its very wide power band. Just to put some context, on a bumpy downhill road where I know my Escort can go flat out without any concern, I have to back off and slow down (and brake in the middle of a straight) in the Focus RS because the front suspension is bottoming out and the car makes zig-zags that make me believe it would not stay on the road if I insist. That is not good.
Also, I question the choice of the 19 inches wheels with series 35 tires. I think 18" with 235/40 would have given a little more headroom for potholes and bumps and would have been more appropriate for this car as OE. I'm definitely not buying another set of 19" when my RS wheels start to become square due to bumpy tarmac and need replacement.
By the way, Romain - the guy from which I sourced my Escort's gearbox internals - is a crazy guy who makes no less crazy Cosworth YB engines for road-going Escort RS Cosworth. Those who don't know the car can watch this video and get a feel of what we had in Europe since back in 1993: the car made 224PS in stock mode and could be easily tuned to about 335PS with a new chip (from Graham Goode or Moutune), bigger injectors & fuel pump, and a free-flow exhaust, and made about 4.5s 0-100 km/h (60 mph) in that trim without any serious mechanical upgrades.
In a sense, the 2016-2017 Focus RS is the one (and only) direct successor of the 1993 large turbo Escort RS Cosworth 4x4, there was nothing in between (sorry, the various FWD Focus cannot compare). The one in the following video is particularly nasty (and not my personal cup of tea.) The video could also be titled: why you don't want too much horsepower, lol.
Back to the Focus RS and its cornering abilities, if you are not doing anything explicitly, as a driver, to take advantage of the active rear differential, you are not driving the car properly, and whatever cornering perf you get out of it will solely be limited by your (in)ability to effectively use the transmission, the major asset and differentiator of this car. For straight-line acceleration, the RS is just a decently-powered kind-of heavy car. If 1/4 mile is your main thing, get something else!
Enough of an introduction - Until next time, drive safely and, above all, STAY ON THE ROAD!
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