Specifications:
Ford Focus ST.
Price:
£17 495 (about R208 000).
Engine:
2522cc, five cylinders, 20 valves, turbocharger, 169kW at 6000rpm, 320Nm from 1600-4000rpm.
Transmission:
Six-speed manual gearbox, front-wheel drive.
Performance:
240km/h, 0-100km/h in 6.5sec, 9.33 litres/100km official average.
What's the most remarkable thing about the Focus ST? It's a tie between the lurid, metallic Performance Orange that is Ford's launch colour of choice and the low price for the pace, kit and cylinder-count on offer.
Here is a Focus that sounds like a Volvo T5 with a big-bore exhaust (or, rather, two of them), a Focus whose easy, velvet-gloved fistful of pulling power should make it the coolest, most effortless of hot hatchbacks.
And that big-bore could be booming in South Africa early in 2006, a Ford SA spokesman said.
The idea of a big engine in a compact car is appealing and it's not an anti-ecological extravagance. This Focus can reach 240km/h, zap to 100km/h in 6.5sec yet still return more than 30 miles to the gallon - a fast car you don't have to feel guilty about.
Power for the ST - 170 turbocharged kW, backed up by 320Nm of torque all the way from 1600rpm to 4000rpm - comes from another part of Ford's worldwide empire -Volvo. Hence that deep, harmonic, throbby five-cylinder beat that's so hard to reconcile with the Focus.
Team RS, the special engineering group responsible for fast Fords, has livened up the engine's personality with variable timing for the two camshafts, a lighter flywheel and a recalibrated throttle to improve response.
There are plenty of other changes to suit this Golf GTI rival. (The Focus has an extra 20kW and costs £2 500 - nearly R30 000 - less.) The body sits 15mm lower on 30 percent stiffer springs and recalibrated dampers.
There's a brace between the front suspension struts, as in a rally car, and the front sub-frame is made of thicker steel. The rear anti-roll bar is stiffer, which creates greater weight transfer across the rear wheels to counteract the heavier nose, and the steering wheel requires eight percent less movement for a given directional change.
The brakes are bigger, too.
This is standard souping-up, made easier because the regular Focus is arguably the best-handling hatchback you can buy. And the visuals have been sexed-up to suit, resulting in a car as striking and attitudinal as a standard Focus is bland.
The obvious changes are the bigger front grille, which sits above an enlarged lower air intake, itself flanked by aluminium-outlined foglight housings. That motif is repeated at the back, where the bumper has grown cartoon whoosh-lines where it flows into the wheel arch.
Inside, huggy Recaro seats can have the bolsters trimmed to match the paintwork, the steering wheel has a thicker rim, the pedals are rubber-studded aluminium and a three-dial pack on the fascia displays the engine's oil pressure and coolant temperature and the amount of turbocharger boost.
The headlining is black - very Golf GTI.
But raw ingredients don't always cook to perfection. The ST also has a fuzzy identity as a car deliberately not too extreme. That said, this ST is less of a shrinking violet than the last one, even if it is a long way from the raw tactility and untamed demeanour of 2002's last- generation Focus RS.
Personality revealed
So it's with no clear expectations that I slip into the new ST and fire up its five-cylinder engine. It sounds good: deep and crisp and potently uneven. The driving position can be rendered perfect with adjustments for height and tilt (the optional leather chairs let you adjust cushion length), and the aluminium-ringed dials quantify performance parameters.
But I'm just 400m down the road and the ST's personality is revealing itself. The steering is glutinous for all its precision and alacrity and I'm aware of considerable nose weight (the whole ST weighs more than 1300kg). It's different from the light, immediate responsiveness of the smaller Fiesta ST; this feels bigger, more Mondeo ST-like. That's not a good thing.
Now I'm overtaking on a brief straight and the ST is pulling off its party trick. No need to change down, stay in fourth gear and feel the turbocharged torque haul the Focus in one lunge right through the engine's speed repertoire. And the engine responds crisply for a turbo unit, with instant effect and hardly any of that "elastic" feeling such engines sometimes have. Not like it feels in Volvo's T5 cars.
The vocal repertoire is similarly broad, culminating in a hard-edged, staccato beat at the 7000rpm limit. The sonority is helped by a "sound symposer", a resonant tube with a vibrating diaphragm aimed at the underbonnet bulkhead so the ST's occupants can gain maximum aural benefit.
The sound is novel for a compact hatchback. Fiat's Stilo Abarth is the only five-cylinder rival.
No stability system
So the Focus is as effortlessly fast as its Astra VXR rival is manically so. A smooth, six-speed gearchange helps and then there's the way it flows through every bend with big grip and perfect poise, some jittering over rippled road surfaces its only failing.
Jost Capito, director of Team RS, says the ST was designed to handle well and stay controllable without a stability system, which is why ESP is not standard. Not once in a spirited drive did I wake up the ESP on my test car.
But here lies the conundrum. I'd like the Focus ST to handle more sharply, to be keener to tighten its cornering line as you decelerate, like a hot hatch should. This would make it feel lighter, keener, more agile.
The next day, I try the ST on Bernie Ecclestone's F1 test track at Le Castellet in the south of France. The way it stays stable in the scary right-hander at the straight's end, nailed to the track at more than 150km/h, is breathtaking.
The Focus goes where pointed, feels foolproof even with ESP off, but it also feels subservient, not a partner to share the thrills. It's too polite, not keen enough to play in the way the Fiesta, or a Golf GTI, will play. It's too disciplined, lacking in the torque-induced steering-wheel tugging that troubles the Astra.
This hot hatchback, impressive engineering feat that it is, needs to hang loose a little.
"We could make it like that," says Capito, "but not for the road."
Aw, come on, Ford. Trust us.
The rivals
ALFA 147 GTA £23 205:
A 3.2-litre, 190kW, fabulous-sounding V6 explains the 147's higher price. The front wheels handle this power surprisingly well, but handling feels a bit nose-heavy, like the Focus's. Stylishly Italian looks don't include the revised nose of lesser 147s.
VAUXHALL ASTRA VXR £18 995:
Terrific idea - handling developed by Lotus, 180kW turbo engine, racy styling - but the VXR is too fractious to enjoy on most roads, as the front wheels pull this way and that. Hyperactive "Sport" setting makes the accelerator act like a catapult.
VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI £19 995:
Here's a car that matches your mood like no other. Its 150kW turbo engine has ample, usable pace and the steering and handling draw the driver into the action, but it can be calm if you want it to be. Looks good, feels good - but expensive.