I’M NOT going to regurgitate that bloody boring story about a SAAB engineer, 250bhp and FWD. You’re car enthusiasts; you’ll have had to put up with such dross for years, even though you’ve heard it 10 million times before. I’m simply going to say this – 301bhp is a lot of power for the driven wheels of a car to cope with if they’re going to do the steering as well, RevoKnuckle or not. So has Ford managed to pull off a modern engineering miracle with the second generation Focus RS?

    I am also not about to lay into the MkI Focus RS, either, although I will admit I am not its biggest fan. I know that different examples of the original ultimate Focus apparently drove better than others, and that tyres can make a big difference to its demented demeanour, but I’ve driven three now, and all of them were far too unruly to be considered great. Mild torque-steer, an overly-aggressive LSD and suspension with about as much give as Ebenezer Scrooge before his ethereal lesson in humility meant it was a nightmare to drive on your average cratered British road. One of Ford and RS’s finest moments, it was not.

   With the 222bhp Focus ST already in place, then, and the failure of the MkI FRS to set the world on fire still burning itself into Ford’s flesh, the announcement of the new RS with only FWD got people tut-tutting. What was to differentiate this thing from a well-tuned ST, then? Well, quite a lot actually, but chief must go to that crazily-named RevoKnuckle stuff (more on that later) and the wild looks of the thing.

   First things first, two things that will upset Ford when talking Focus RS shop – one, if you go on about torque-steer. A lot of the corrupting problems of the first Focus RS were in fact due to its diff savagely dragging drive hither and thither to maximise traction, rather than the 212bhp blown four’s strenuous exertions on the rubber.

   And so it will be with the new car – the mammoth torque of 324lb ft easily bests the V8 BMW M3, but the Quaife diff has more say on what the front wheels are doing. And the second thing to avoid is calling the RS an evolved ST – although they share the same engine layout, the level of re-engineering that has gone into the RS’s lump, plus the multitude of chassis upgrades, mean this really is something else entirely.

Following the death of Ford's Cosworth models, the RS is once again the ultimate fast Ford. RS is a badge not used lightly.

    You see, rather than just up the boost pressure and give the car a new ECU, Ford RS engineers actually have developed unique camshafts, an uprated cylinder head and camshaft and a revised intake and exhaust manifold for the five-pot lump, as well as revised pistons and bores, and the new Borg-Warner K16 turbo capable of 1.4bar of boost (so they have upped the boost… sort of…) working with an improved intercooler.

    Chassis-wise, that RevoKnuckle is an evolution of the MacPherson strut, with a C-shaped addition on the lower mount that basically allows the distance of the steering axis of rotation for the wheel (the kingpin offset) to be closer to its centre. This allowed Ford to set-up the FWD system with the optimum camber and caster to prevent as much torque-steer as possible. In other words, this is arcane, dark magic that is flying 33,000 feet above my head at a cruising speed of 550mph, but if it means I can floor the damned thing in first and second gear, I’ll comprehend it a whole lot better.