The back area didn’t have as much support though, and I found myself holding my body in place with my hands on the steering wheel and with my knee on the central tunnel. The seats are cool looking, with athletic-type material, and the bottoms are nicely bolstered. I spent a few hours cruising around over the weekend, and found the cabin livable, but not lovable. It’s hard to get your foot on both pedals at once, unless you’re hitting the brakes really hard. The brakes are strong, and the pedal placement is good for heel-toe shifting, but the pads are so fresh in this car, that the pedal stops just an inch or two from the top of the stroke. Plug the Mustang setup into this hot hatch with a white cue ball shifter and I’m sold. ![]() The shifter has a short throw, but the feel is too rubbery to be satisfying. If you keep the revs high, this car flies. Turbo lag is minimal, only coming on in first gear, or if you roll out from a stop sign in second. On the other hand, I guess we don’t know how much this RevoKnuckle system can handle until we try it. It makes 252 hp and 270 lb-ft of torque, which is nearly the maximum you can put in a front driver without making serious compromises. The GTI exhibits the much less torque steer, but also has about 50 less horsepower to deal with.įord’s 2.0-liter EcoBoost four in the ST is strong, and pulls all the way to redline. The tires will still grab the grooves in the road and try to follow them, so be ready for that when approaching red lights. You can still feel the tires pulling on the steering wheel under heavy acceleration, but it doesn’t threaten to rip the wheel from your hand. It hasn’t been eliminated entirely, but reduced significantly. That means the steering axis is closer to the tire’s centerline, which reduces spindle length and scrub radius, which in turn reduces torque steer - they tell us. With the RevoKnuckle setup, the spring and damper assembly are independent of the steering knuckle. Ford compensates for that using torque vectoring - sending power to the wheel that needs it - and something called the RevoKnuckle. With the traction control off you can feel the tires fighting for grip, and fighting torque steer, through the steering wheel. It also felt supremely short from lock to lock, which is always good when poking around a parking lot or trying to do a u-turn on a standard street. It’s supremely balanced for a front driver, exhibiting neither understeer nor oversteer during hard-ish cornering on public roads.įord revised the electronic power steering system for 2015 and it has a good weight to it now, as well as a surprising amount of feel for that type of setup. It’s a little bouncier than I’d like on the expressway, but the Goodyear Eagle F1s have no problem gripping around corners, even over imperfect pavement. The 2015 ST gets new front springs and sportier shocks all around. It starts with the steering and chassis setup. That’s not to say the ST bests those cohorts in all areas, but overall, there’s no hotter hatch, in my mind, than the current turbo Focus. Two years later, it’s looking down from the mountaintop, while a new group of hatches gear up for battle. ![]() ![]() in 2013, it had a tough group of competitors to fight with, including the MazdaSpeed3, Hyundai Veloster Turbo and, of course, the reigning champion of the hot hatches, the VW Golf GTI. ROAD TEST EDITOR JAKE LINGEMAN: When the latest Ford Focus ST came back to the U.S.
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