Jost Capito, Ford's premier performance guru, is on the phone from Cologne, and he's getting evangelical. Surely you can't possibly shove 300bhp through the front wheels of a Focus and get away with it, I ask him?
Long pause. "The RS will change your mind. We haven't even reached the limit of what the front wheels can cope with yet. Have we raised the bar significantly? I'm convinced of it." Not that Jost has owned up to the magic 300 exactly.
(...)
"We've redesigned the front suspension," says Jost. "It's a double wishbone set-up and uses something similar to a MacPherson strut, only better. The knuckle is mounted to the strut, and now the strut doesn't move under load. It works in conjunction with a new Quaife limited-slip diff, and eliminates steering disturbance. To be honest, it's almost unbelievable."