2013 FORD FOCUS ST: It’s a blast

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2013 (4641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The world, we are constantly reminded, is shrinking.

Not the size of the planet, of course, but the perceived distances between the nearly seven billion people who call it home.

Technology is at the heart of this revolution, beginning thousands of years ago with sailing ships, sped up rapidly in the 20th century via transmission cables and air travel, and today at light speed thanks to satellite connections that beam everything from striking images to inane chatter around the world in mere seconds.

Few industries have embraced this global contraction more than the automotive sector, driven by economies of scale in production, marketing and selling its products. The language of the day embraces that world view, with terms such as “global platform” and “world car” as common as “cupholder” and “front airbags” in the carmaker lexicon.

Which brings us to the 2013 Ford Focus ST, a vehicle that represents this new world order like few others.

“Focus ST has not come around by chance,” says Jost Capito, Ford’s director of global performance vehicles. “What came first was our global performance strategy, which has been developed with North America, Europe and Asia together.

“With this, the core DNA attributes — steering, driving dynamics, sound quality and power enhancements for all ST models — have been defined to the extent that our engineers can take that global DNA fingerprint and use it to create the new Focus ST.”

All of which is a bit of a long-winded way of saying this vehicle represents the first of, Ford hopes, many performance-oriented models to be sold around the world. The Focus ST — the ST standing for sport technologies — is engineered through a partnership between Europe’s Team RS and North America’s Special Vehicle Team — and will be sold in more than 40 markets worldwide.

While there have been European-spec Focus ST models in the past, this hot hatch is an entirely different proposition, marking a number of firsts for the automaker. Of those, the most significant is the inaugural use of Ford’s highly acclaimed 2.0-litre EcoBoost engine in a high-performance model. Engineers have taken that base engine — found in everything from Ford compacts to mid-size sedans and CUVs — and added high-pressure direct injection, low-inertia turbocharging and twin independent variable camshaft timing. Gearhead gobblygook translation: great performance without sacrificing fuel efficiency.

That less-is-more philosophy — coaxing more power from smaller engines — is an industry-wide trend, with even the likes of BMW and Porsche dropping four-cylinder power plants in their sport models.

However, Ford engineers eschewed the entrenched trend toward manumatic transmissions with the ST, offering only a six-speed manual gearbox (that sound you hear is boy-racer baby boomers cheering).

So, at the heart of the Focus ST is a winning combination of a great little engine pumping out horsepower numbers in the mid-200s, mated to a slick short-throw shifter.

A hazard of such a combo is torque steer (to a chorus of boos), that annoying and all-too-prevalent experience of the steering wheel bucking wildly when you release the clutch on an upshift and goose the gas. To avoid this, much thought and design has gone into the ST’s steering box, an all-new system utilizing a variable-ratio steering rack coupled with electric power-assisted steering guided by state-of-the-art software. Gearhead gobblygook translation: minimal torque steer.

There are other computer-based systems to keep you going in the right direction, and a sport suspension that does a good job of keeping things calm in the cockpit. And if things get too hairy in there, the sport Recaro seats, with bolstering I’ve only experienced in bona fide race cars, keep the front seat occupants in place. For rear-seat riders, the best advice is to just hang on — you could be in for a bumpy ride.

Just as the exterior takes the already sporty Focus design into even more racy territory — love the big front air dam and rear centre-exit exhaust pipes — the interior ups the sport level throughout, from the piped leather seating to the sport steering wheel to the race-inspired gauge package and sport pedals.

But there’s also a nod to civilized motoring, epitomized by the centre-mounted touchscreen that controls climate, stereo, navigation and connectivity.

Having spent a week in the Focus ST driving around metro Vancouver, all I can say is there are going to be big smiles on the drivers in those 40 lucky markets for which this car is destined.

The acceleration is awesome, the shifts smooth and the handling astounding for a five-door hatchback. Not once did I feel a compromise in any aspect of the vehicle.

It is one of only a handful of cars I’ve driven in the past year that I really would like to get on the track, as I felt that even after the most spirited run on some deserted twisty roads, much was left on the table.

That said, as a daily driver, the Focus ST is civilized beyond measure, and despite seemingly universal protestations about manual gearboxes in stop-and-go traffic, I found little to grumble about making my way through congested downtown traffic.

The power comes on nicely in upshifts, and on downshifts there is none of that head-jarring forward motion when the gears engage.

The only real limitation is fairly tight back seats, but that’s little wonder as the 2013 Ford Focus ST was designed as a driver-oriented car, and one that will satisfy a global audience hungry for such vehicles.

— Postmedia News