Warwickshire Police has joined the growing band of Focus ST owners upgrading the performance of their vehicles with the latest kit from Mountune.
The Brentwood based tuner is fitting its ST260 pack to the Warwickshire cop cars, giving our increasingly fleet-footed friends a power upgrade from the standard ST’s already healthy 225PS to 260PS, and what Mountune calls a ‘rather substantial’ increase in torque to 295ft lb from 236ft lb.
The Mountune ST260 upgrade comprises a larger Pro Alloy intercooler for the turbo, K&N panel filter and recalibrated ECU. It has full TUV approval, its own 12 month/12000 mile warranty and can apparently be fitted without adversely effecting Ford’s own factory warranty. The retail price is £1,096 inc. VAT, plus an hour of labour for fitting.
According to Mountune, the kit brings the ST’s 0-60mph time down by 0.6secs to 5.9secs, and shaves 1.9secs off the 0-100mph time – now 14.1secs.
However it’s the additional flexibility afforded by the extra torque that has most impressed the boys in blue.
Police Sergeant Andrew Rawson says; ‘Warwickshire Police have been running Focus ST's on the Operations Task Force for the past two years. These vehicles are in the front line of Roads Policing responding to incidents and taking a pro-active approach to denying criminals the use of Warwickshire's roads.
‘We've been very excited about the Mountune Performance modifications. The car is now more responsive and with the benefit of the improved torque the officers engaged in response and pursuit situations have more options available to them.
Response driving is stressful and inherently hazardous but with the improved performance it's reduced the overall risk to the officers, and therefore the public.’