RE: Ford Focus RS (Mk3) | Spotted

[RacerMike]

Midgster said:

FN2TypeR said:

Augustus Windsock said:

Seat too high?
JCR-Developments do a kit that lowers the Recaro shell seats by 55mm iirc. May not sound a lot but it seems to make all the difference and be a popular mod....
https://www.jcr-developments.com/jcr/product/mk3-f...

Bargain!

At £550, if you break it down to £100 per cm, or £10 per mm it doesn't seem to bad

You can alternatively buy the Ford Performance frame which lowers it 15mm and costs £568 owe side....double bargain!

https://shop.ford.co.uk/collections/all/products/p...

[PhantomPH]

Visually, the car is just all about the panel gaps, for me. Especially on the white car - feel like I could put a finger into all of them...especially the front of the bonnet!

Mate of mine has a black one and you don't notice the gaps, but any light colour....wow!

IIRC his first mod was lowering the seat frames. Don't remember him admitting to it being a £500 job, tho! Ha ha.

[Dale487]

RacerMike said:

Midgster said:

FN2TypeR said:

Augustus Windsock said:

Seat too high?
JCR-Developments do a kit that lowers the Recaro shell seats by 55mm iirc. May not sound a lot but it seems to make all the difference and be a popular mod....
https://www.jcr-developments.com/jcr/product/mk3-f...

Bargain!

At £550, if you break it down to £100 per cm, or £10 per mm it doesn't seem to bad

You can alternatively buy the Ford Performance frame which lowers it 15mm and costs £568 owe side....double bargain!

https://shop.ford.co.uk/collections/all/products/p...

These should have been fitted as standard, or at least a no-cost option.

[MarkCup70]

The second engine I had in my RS (the first drank its coolant at 8.5k miles) was confirmed as having the 'correct' head gasket, yet still it failed and needed to be replaced.

I'm not convinced on the longevity of the power unit myself.

[RacerMike]

MarkCup70 said:

The second engine I had in my RS (the first drank its coolant at 8.5k miles) was confirmed as having the 'correct' head gasket, yet still it failed and needed to be replaced.

I'm not convinced on the longevity of the power unit myself.

Mine did 18,000 miles after the change and didn't touch the coolant. There are some fringe cases like yours (as there are with many cars.....Golf R's for instance have been fairly well known to blow the seals on the turbo and dump all their oil through it), but it would seem that the majority have been absolutely fine since the recall.

There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the engine design. Many internet experts were keen to point the finger at the block being open deck, but the reality is that it had nothing to do with that at all. And many tuners have got well over 400hp out of the engine with a standard block and no significant issues.

Personally, I think you're no more likely to have issues with the car as you will with any other. Absolutely nothing is perfect and completely fault free.

[Jon_S_Rally]

Gez79 said:

If you go off quoted figures then the Golf R and S3 are both well over 100kg lighter, the Ford tips in at 1600kg and the vag stuff is quoted at between 1400 and 1473kg.

Also I seem to remember that most write ups and you tube videos seem to show the RS struggling to match it's quoted acceleration times, whereas the Golf and Audi always seem to be slightly quicker than quoted.

Not suggesting they're better cars but they certainly seem to be better value used. 25k for a 3 year old focus seems a bit steep to me. Especially when it wasn't top of the hot hatch heap when new

Wasn't top of the hot hatch heap? It won loads of group tests and was generally considered to have moved the game on quite considerably. Too many it was definitely top of the pile.

timrud said:

Cars that were better in 2016:

A45
RS3
S3
Golf R
Megane

You just can't escape the cheap and nasty interior of the Ford. I can see why it appeals to a certain demographic, who don't mind sub standard quality when blinded by the Ford RS brand.

What's nasty about the interior? It's just a hatchback. Yes, the Golf is nicer (though fancy seats weren't an option), but the Megane is nothing special, while the Merc and Audi were more expensive. The interior of the Ford is cheap because the car WAS cheap. That was part of the appeal. The quality was fine for the price.

[RacerMike]

macky17 said:

With the new Fiesta ST (and maybe the Focus ST?) Ford seem finally to have delivered a fun hot hatch with decent ride quality for UK roads. This mk3 RS is too bloody hard because the suspension setup is cheap. Cue people saying “I’ve owned one for x years and it’s not too bad” but the fact is you haven’t owned a car with properly matched spring and damper rates if you think this is acceptable. I await the mk4 - let’s see if they’ve finally figured out where the important money needs to be invested.

Suspension setup is cheap?! What on earth are you on about? The development process for the RS was one of the most protracted hot hatch gestation periods of recent hot hatch history! They were running early prototypes back in 2013! They spent an absolute age deciding on the ride and handling attributes. So it definitely want a cheap process.

The suspension is the way it is as they believe (rightly or wrongly) that this is the ride attribute people want from an RS. Whilst the primary ride behaviour on a motorway could be somewhat tiresome, on a road, when driven hard, it was about right. They had to differentiate it from the ST.

Of course it didn’t suit everyone, but it put it in a different category to the softer drag strip hero’s like the A45 and Golf R. And given how successful the car was, and how well it did in group tests, I would suggest they made the right choice!

[TheOversteerLever]

I'd quite like to drive one of these. Although I'm not a massive fan of either Ford or their RS range, these have got to be a better drive than the Golf R/Audi S3, which are purely a tool for pointing and squirting between corners.

I had an 2016 S3 from new - great car, just not very fun. Plenty of grip, as expected, but it was just so dull. The single piston sliding calipers should have never been fitted to any car with 300bhp.

[DoubleD]

I find it funny how defensive some get about this car.

[Frimley111R]

Jon_S_Rally said:

What's nasty about the interior? It's just a hatchback. Yes, the Golf is nicer (though fancy seats weren't an option), but the Megane is nothing special, while the Merc and Audi were more expensive. The interior of the Ford is cheap because the car WAS cheap. That was part of the appeal. The quality was fine for the price.

It's all relative. Interiors of even the most budget cars are very good these days. The Golf has nice bits but also a few cheap plastics that show that it too has fairly low cost origins. If you're choosing based on interior plastics you'd be better off with a Merc/BMW. I tried the golf R and the interior of our BMW 120d is a big step up in quality. Sometimes I think mags over rate VW interiors.

[r5kdt]

timrud said:

Cars that were better in 2016:

A45
RS3
S3
Golf R
Megane

You just can't escape the cheap and nasty interior of the Ford. I can see why it appeals to a certain demographic, who don't mind sub standard quality when blinded by the Ford RS brand.

Certain demographic? lol

I have owned almost every RS from a mk2 escort RS 2000 through the cosworths and then mk1/2 and now 3 Focus RS's and the one thing that they have all done compared to the other brands apart from being great drivers cars is having miniscule depreciation due to their relatively low numbers of production and following.

They are generally affordable and finally as to having, in your mind, a cheap interior (and i would challenge that!) Ford clearly spent the money on the development and driveability of the car and in MFP375 mode it is a great car to drive ;-)

[Water Fairy]

Ahbefive said:

timrud said:

Cars that were better in 2016:

A45
RS3
S3
Golf R
Megane

You just can't escape the cheap and nasty interior of the Ford. I can see why it appeals to a certain demographic, who don't mind sub standard quality when blinded by the Ford RS brand.

Sorry but you clearly haven't driven one or have a vastly different idea of what better means. Some may be quicker, some may have more expensive feeling interior plastics but all except the Megane are absolutely bland understeer on the limit numbness to drive.

None of your list is anything other than haldex or fwd and most are auto, the RS is totally different and by far for the better.

I can only assume that driving dynamics are further down your list than they are on mine or you simply haven't driven one.

Edited by Ahbefive on Sunday 11th August 15:03

Surprised he didn't put the CTR on his list tbh

[rev-erend]

It's a cracking car. Sure it will be a future classic.

[RacerMike]

DoubleD said:

I find it funny how defensive some get about this car.

I find it funny how much people slate it with zero experience of driving one! Happens in every thread, and usually involves:

- It’s way too heavy
- They blow up
- How are people selling at this price? WBAC value it at £16500
- My remapped Golf R beat one of these at Santa Pod the other weekend

[HM-2]

Elatino1 said:

It is very different in its operation and even more different in how it feels to actually drive.

They're both clutch-based variable AWD systems, with (in recent versions of Haldex anyway) fairly similar torque vectoring and variable power splits front/rear. The most fundamental difference is that Twinster works via an independent clutch control for each rear wheel rather than splitting front/rear only. Oh, and a drift button.

I don't mean to denigrate the Twinster system by any stretch of the imagination as it's very good, but it's really not that different in application to other clutch-based torque vectoring systems out there.

[Rawwr]

I really don't think the interior is as bad as a lot of people suggest. I had a mk3.5 ST, which is near as dammit identical to that of the RS with the standard seats and it was pleasantly comfortable and well screwed together. The plastics didn't pick-up scratches easily and everything was laid out in a sensible, logical, ergonomic place. I'm not really sure what else people would've wanted or were expecting.

[RacerMike]

HM-2 said:

Elatino1 said:

It is very different in its operation and even more different in how it feels to actually drive.

They're both clutch-based variable AWD systems, with (in recent versions of Haldex anyway) fairly similar torque vectoring and variable power splits front/rear. The most fundamental difference is that Twinster works via an independent clutch control for each rear wheel rather than splitting front/rear only. Oh, and a drift button.

I don't mean to denigrate the Twinster system by any stretch of the imagination as it's very good, but it's really not that different in application to other clutch-based torque vectoring systems out there.

Twinster and the new Magna diff in the A45 are the only two that can apportion torque side to side across the rear axle. All Haldex applications have a centre clutch (which is actually on the nose of the rear diff) but the side to side split is mechanical (and usually open). They therefore cannot torque vector.

In the Focus, the application of the Twinster is more aggressive than the Magna diff in the A45 as Ford run a 1.7% taller ratio on the ring gear for the PTU which means the prop shaft to the rear is always 1.7% faster than the front wheels. This means that it can be truly rear biased when the clutch packs in the Twinster are locked.

For Drift mode, the only differences in the Focus over normal mode are:

- More aggressive Throttle Map
- More aggressive ramp rate on the rear diff locking map
- More bias to the outer wheel when locking
- A switch to 'Sport DSC' which reduces torque interventions from the TCS and Stability Control and some interpolation of side slip enabling a degree of yaw control beyond basic DSC

The A45 does something similar but lacks the offset diff ratio.

[DoubleD]

RacerMike said:

DoubleD said:

I find it funny how defensive some get about this car.

I find it funny how much people slate it with zero experience of driving one! Happens in every thread, and usually involves:

- It’s way too heavy
- They blow up
- How are people selling at this price? WBAC value it at £16500
- My remapped Golf R beat one of these at Santa Pod the other weekend

I guess they just arent very well liked by a lot of people. There is no point in getting upset about it though.

[rev-erend]

The over damping was much more annoying that the fact the seat being a bit too high.

[RacerMike]

DoubleD said:

RacerMike said:

DoubleD said:

I find it funny how defensive some get about this car.

I find it funny how much people slate it with zero experience of driving one! Happens in every thread, and usually involves:

- It’s way too heavy
- They blow up
- How are people selling at this price? WBAC value it at £16500
- My remapped Golf R beat one of these at Santa Pod the other weekend

I guess they just arent very well liked by a lot of people. There is no point in getting upset about it though.

Not sure many on here are getting upset are they? I’m certainly not....all I’m doing is responding to people who are making incorrect statements with information. Much like the rest of PH, someone expresses an opinion and/or information, and others reply....also with opinion and/or information. That’s how forums work.