Ford Over-Delivers With Focus RS' 350 Horsepower Surprise

Under-promise and over-deliver may be a strategy as old as time, but it doesn't hurt when adding horsepower to the Ford Focus RS. The hot-hatch sounded potent enough back when Ford announced it in March, a 315 HP outing for the 2.3 liter EcoBoost engine after it had been through Ford Performance's obsessive hands. Now, it turns out, that was conservative.

According to Ford today, the Focus RS in fact packs a hefty 350 horsepower at 6,000 rpm, and will go sailing on to a 6,800-rpm redline. That means HP matches torque, with the car delivering 350 lb-ft of that at just 3,200 rpm.

Meanwhile, while we're yet to see a final power curve, Ford is promising "especially chunky midrange power delivery." That's courtesy of a new, low-inertia twin-scroll turbocharger paired with a larger compressor, which forces more air through across the range.

What helps make the Focus RS particularly appealing is that the high-tech has been paired with the sort of mechanical involvement a certain category of drivers still enjoy.

For instance, while the car's AWD system gets two electronically-controlled clutch packs, able to push torque to the front or the back, or left or right, depending on what wheel finds itself on the outside during more aggressive cornering, you still get a manual transmission.

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Still, that six-speed manual isn't dumb either. Ford Performance Europe has taken the stop-start technology usually relied upon to keep emissions down, and reworked it to deliver stall recovery.

If you get over-excited and stall the Focus RS, all it will take is pushing the clutch back in to restart the engine. According to the engineers it's just as fast as the split-second stop-start system normally.

Ford says it's still on track to begin production of the Focus RS later in 2015.