New Ford Focus RS gets 345bhp: OFFICIAL

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The new 2016 Ford Focus RS – which debuted at Geneva and will be at Goodwood this week – gets 345bhp and 347lb/ft of torque from its 2.3 litre EcoBoost engine.

The new Ford Focus RS is heading for its dynamic debut at this week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed – after its debut at Geneva in the spring – ahead of which Ford had finally revealed just how powerful the new Focus RS is.

Promises of ‘more than 316bhp’ have been kept, with the new RS Ford actually getting 10 per cent more power that the Mustang with the same engine – a full 345bhp and 347lb/ft of torque, almost exactly the same power as the run-out RS 500 of the last generation Focus RS had.

But the new Focus RS is a far cleverer car than the last, with a variable all-wheel-drive system and Dynamic Torque Vectoring, with the electronics continuously shifting power between the axles and wheels to give the best traction and dynamics. The RS also has a Launch Mode, and a ‘Drift’ mode so you can play, despite 4WD traction.

Ford has extracted 10 per cent more from the 2.3 litre EcoBoost than the Mustang does with by fitting a low-inertia twin-scroll turbo with bigger compressor and intercooler, with a beefed-up clutch and short-shift, six-speed manual gearbox, and a big exhaust tuned for both performance and aural joy.

The new Focus RS won’t actually go in to production until the end of 2015 – with first cars probably not arriving in the UK until spring 2016 – at prices we’re expecting to start at just the right side of £30k.

But if you’re hankering after one – but want to see what it can do first – make sure you’re at Goodwood this weekend when  Ken Block will be putting it through its paces