US plans to receive Ford Focus RS Canceled
By Thami Masemola
May 27, 2009 5:27 PM
Filed Under: American, Ford, Production
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.
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Comments
However the Focus is quite close to the end of its lifecycle and US is not found of the practical 5-doors vehicle except SUVs.
Edited by user on May 27, 2009 at 6:51 PM
The 2011MY Mk3 Focus which will make its debut sometime in late 2010 will be a global model, wait for that one and just hope that it will have an RS performance model.
Edited by user on May 27, 2009 at 8:33 PM
Instead, Ford allows that .. and i'm about to import a Mustang for me. So .. in the same way, i think there will be some private/independet dealer to import the RS from Europe or any other hot hatch, just wait to see how great volumes will be sold by Ford with the new Fiesta in US, and then .. they will rethink their sales strategy for hatches.
Edited by user on May 28, 2009 at 12:07 AM
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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.