According to a report by Autocar, the Focus RS500 is awaiting the final go-ahead for production, but with interest in hot hatches reaching new highs lately, you’ve got to think the green light is inevitable.
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But according to a recent piece by United Kingdom website Autocar, a Ford Focus RS500 mightn’t arrive at all; the outlet reports that one of its sources said the Focus RS500 is “not genuinely green-lighted” yet, even though “the desire exists to have a star in the RS and ST range”. The final decision is actually right now hooked on small technicalities – how to add the 500-units run to the already choked factory in Cologne and making sure it will have a successful business case. Speculation on the power output of a new Focus RS500 comes courtesy of examining the output of the 2010 model. The next-generation Focus will begin assembly in the fall of next year.
In its second-generation guise, the RS500 had around 15 percent more power than the contemporary RS. Applying that extra power to the ground shouldn’t be an issue for the RS’s new active rear differential, which can send up to 70 percent of the engine’s torque to the rear wheels.
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With greater power comes greater performance, so expect the Focus RS500 to cut the RS’s sprint to 60 miles per hour from 4.7 seconds to about 4.2 seconds while its top speed should rise to 167 miles per hour or more. If the answer is yes, the Focus RS500 will serve as the vehicle that drives overall interest in the 3rd generation Focus as it enters final lifecycle in the summer of 2017.
