Official: Ford Focus RS not coming to the U.S.

It was officially confirmed by Jost Capito, the man in charge of Ford’s global performance division, that the new and awesome Focus RS will not make it to the U.S. due to the fact that it is not homologated for North America! “We’d like to, but the base car isn’t homologated for North America and that’s too costly a job to carry out just for a niche vehicle like the RS,” said Capito.
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Whelan - 5/27/2009 10:39:31 AM

+1 Boost

"PFFFFT" And the arrow missed the mark again. Another potentially great product for Ford to get back into the performance section let go. I guess they like the Toyota theory when it comes to performance, that would be nothing special. Oooh I get the same motor with a spoiler, nifty! I feel like we are going to the gas crisis of the 70s where affordable fun cars are going away. Sure that was the muscle era that was diminished, but we used to have great battles with the WRX, Si, GTS, GTI, etc. Now unless you have at least 30k + to drop on a VW R32, STI, Evo. Then you are up a creek for a fun performance car that is affordable to most. Honda has not updated much on the Civic Si since it's debut, Toyota is just a joke since they dropped the Celica GTS and their XRS Matrix and Corolla only have 184hp, and Ford has been out of it for awhile in small cars with performance. The Focus SVT may not have been the quickest, but it was performance oriented. Will they ever get it right again?

09CTSVforMe - 5/27/2009 10:33:01 PM

+1 Boost

Whelan, might I suggest you go drive a Chevy Cobalt SS Coupe, which can be found for under $19,000 if you're adept at negotiation. My understanding is that a chip tune can get them over 300whp for a modest investment of $250, which I intend to validate personally. Even without the tune, it completely outperforms such things as a Civic Si.