Just five years ago, Mountune – a brand that specializes in tuning Focus, Fiesta, and Mustang models – released a sick upgrade for the 2011 Ford Focus RS that brought it up from 300 horsepower to around 345 horsepower. This was enough to make the previous-gen RS the equivalent of the Ford Focus RS500 at the time. Now, Ford Performance and Mountune have dropped a new upgrade package for the new Ford Focus RS and, while it doesn’t bring as much as the upgrade for the 2011 model, it does offer up an extra chunk of power that you want to have if you’re an RS owner – the few of you that have managed to take delivery of your hot hatch, that is.
Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot that goes into the upgrade. To start off, the car gets a new, high-performance air filter, followed by a bespoke alloy crossover duct with silicone hoses, an upgraded air re-circulation valve, and some revised tuning for the engine control unit (ECU.) The power increase is a decent 20 horsepower and 29.5 pound-feet of torque. It’s enough to drop the RS’ 0-to-60 mph sprint from 4.7 seconds to 4.5 seconds. And, as Ford so willingly pointed out, this makes the Focus RS quicker to 60 mph than the Porsche 911 Carrera – a model that costs more than double that of the Focus RS.
Tyrone Johnson, a Vehicle Engineering Manage for Ford Performance, said, “Ford has a proud history of working with Mountune to unleash even more power from our hot hatchbacks for dedicated performance enthusiasts. Boosting power to 375 PS launches the already class-leading Focus RS even further ahead of the field.”
For now, this package is only available in the U.K. where Ford has received upward of 4,600 orders since last September. It can be fitted by any Mountune-appointed dealer in just 1.5 hours and doesn’t void any of the factory warranties – a nice feature that comes along with the partnership between Mountune and Ford Performance. The package will set you back £899, or about $1,175 at current exchange rates. To break it down for you, that comes to about $48.95 per extra pony and $39.83 for each extra pound-foot of gut-wrenching torque.
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Why it Matters
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that Mountune and Ford Performance have already dropped a new performance upgrade for the Focus RS, but I am a little shocked that it's coming in the middle of huge production problems that have customers waiting longer than expected to take delivery of the Focus RS they ordered months ago. The power and torque upgrade is nice, but it would be cool to see even more power and torque. Of course, it seems more like Ford just wanted to stick it to Porsche by making the RS just a bit quicker in the straight line to 60 mph. Then again, I’d love to see the 911 Carrera and the upgraded RS run a full quarter mile to see who really has the bragging rights but, for now, we’ll give Ford its 15 minutes in the spotlight.
On another note, we’ve seen what we believe to be the 2018 Ford Focus RS500 testing on the track. And, the release of this new performance upgrade for the RS raises a very interesting question: Is 370 horsepower and 376 pound-feet of torque something we can expect from the upcoming RS500? If the past is any indicator that is certainly a possibility, but what if Ford is planning something even better for the RS500? How about a cool 400 ponies and 420 pound-feet of torque? That would be a real nice set of numbers to see, and it would certainly put the RS500 toward the top of the food chain. For now, we don’t know if it is in the cards or not – Ford will probably disappoint on that front – but we can all hope, right?