About a month ago WCF published a story about a Ford Focus RS spotted in Michigan. This raised some hopes of Ford taking some RS stock stateside. Further fueling this speculation was an interview done by Automotive News with Ford's director of advanced product creation and global performance, Hermann Salenbauch, in which the man was quoted as saying his company was looking for feedback (about the RS) from media and the public. "How much do they like it? Is it really what they want? We are pretty confident that it is," he said.
Fast forward to now and it appears the wind has changed direction. AutoCar interviewed Jost Capito, the new head of Ford's global performance division. Capito and his team of bean counters reckon the whole exercise of homologating the RS for North American consumption would be too pricey to bear.
"We'd like to," said Capito, "but the base car isn't homologated for North America and that's too costly a job to carry out just for a niche vehicle like the RS."
Again we cannot help but wonder how it is that Ford's best-performing hatchback ever will not be sold on the Blue Oval's home soil. That's a bit like Sony selling the PlayStation console series everywhere else but in Japan.
With the world market being what it is these days, Ford has put off a lot of potential customer by pulling this nonsense on the American people. We deserve to have at least the same top-notch products that they offer the rest of the world, esp since this is their home country. I find it insulting.
Same goes for GM, though some credit has to be given to them for starting to trickle Opels to the US, finally. We'll see how long that lasts if the sell Opel.