Category: Hot Hatchbacks 
Price Range: £16,700 to £22,845
Strong engine, plenty of power, loads of grip and engaging handling, fine brakes, reasonable asking price.
Harsh ride, existence of the much cheaper Clio Cup.
The Focus RS is a superb hot-hatchback, and feels every inch as if it was created for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts. Which is nice.
The standard Focus gets four stars in the EuroNCAP crash tests, which is a very good result and, because the bare bones of the Focus RS are unchanged, it should hold up in a crash just as admirably. Twin airbags are standard anyway, as is ABS, but there's no stability or traction control. That doesn't matter though, because if you want those sort of driver aids, you don't buy a Focus RS. No, there's a limited-slip-differential for traction control and, besides, the sheer agility and controllability might well get you out of tricky situations. Thanks to a Thatcham Category 1 alarm, remote-locking and the Focus's general security, it gets into insurance group 16A, too, which isn't too shabby. Besides which, even if somebody nicks your keys, they'll be turning the key in the ignition infuriatingly until they realise that you need to hit the little green button on the centre console to fire the engine.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Ford Focus
wrote on 05 10 2007
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