The Next-Gen Ford Focus RS is Dead: Report
Photo: Ford
As if the world needed more misery, a representative from Ford has confirmed that there will not be a next-gen Ford Focus RS coming anywhere anytime soon. It was already well understood that the Focus RS’ time has come and gone in the United States, but more stringent emissions testing in Europe has effectively signaled the end of development for Europe as well.
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T’was high production costs that felled the next-gen Focus RS
A Ford spokesperson told Autocar that it has not hit onto a cost-effective way to implement a hybrid powertrain in the Focus RS, which would be necessary to ensure that it wouldn’t hurt the automaker’s emissions in Europe. In February, a source familiar with the development of the hot hatch told the U.K.-based outlet that Ford was “waiting for our engineering team to come up with a solution on the powertrain and that is not easy given the new fleet CO2 regulations.” It had previously been suggested that Ford was looking to make the next-gen Focus RS a mild hybrid with 400-plus horsepower, but that would not have been efficient enough for the European standard.
“As a result of pan-European emissions standards, increased CO2 taxation, and the high cost of developing an RS with some form of electrification for a relatively low volume of vehicles, we are not planning another RS version of the Focus,” the spokesperson told Autocar. “We remain committed to Ford Performance vehicles in Europe as part of our DNA, with cars like the multi-award-winning Focus ST and Fiesta ST, as well as our Mustang and Ranger Raptor models.”
None of this is to say that Ford won’t find a way to pick that particular ball back up in a few years when an elegant solution emerges and makes the Focus RS feasible once more. Hopefully by that point, it will be clear that folks would sure like the chance to try the next-gen Ford Focus RS on the other side of the Atlantic, too.
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Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.