Ford Focus ST Edition 2021 UK first drive

Fellow students of car manufacturer price lists will have noticed how widely Ford has started applying the ‘edition’ label to its various models of late. Suddenly everything’s an ‘edition’ of something - even a boggo Zetec.

In that context, if I’d just developed an extra-special Focus ST hot hatchback that I wanted to grab some attention for, I might choose another name for it than, say, Focus ST Edition. Then again, being the only Focus derivative in the catalogue that didn’t have an ‘edition’ after its name, maybe the poor thing was feeling left out.

To some, this’ll sound like it ought to be a stickers-and-stripes kind of exercise, but it isn’t. It’s a five-door ST hatchback that only comes in Azura Blue with a black roof, black wheels, a black roof spoiler and black mirror caps. It has an identical engine and drivetrain to any other petrol-powered ST. And inside it has a fully-loaded equipment specification as standard, and part-leather upholstery with bodywork-matching blue stitching.

But most importantly, it has coilover suspension from KW Automotive with manually adjustable twin-tube dampers in place of the Performance Pack-equipped car’s adaptive ones; powder-coated springs rated some 50 per cent higher than a standard ST’s; and lightweight, flow-formed, 19in alloy wheels. 

And if you’re now thinking that modestly priced hot hatchbacks like this don’t usually get really trick, manually configurable suspension of the kind that you might expect to see on track-ready Porsches, AMGs and BMW M cars? Well, you’d be absolutely right. Ford RSs don’t typically get suspension like this, either.

First of all, the new coilovers lower the car’s ride height by 10mm at their default settings, which makes those new rims (which themselves deliver a 10 per cent saving on unsprung mass) fill the car’s arches rather nicely. I’m not usually so keen on black body trim, but the ST Edition’s black roof and mirrors don’t offend me, and its new black-edged ST badges actually look quite good.

Open the boot and you’ll find a toolkit with which to adjust the car’s ride height through up to 20mm at either axle; bump damping rate through twelve presets; and rebound through sixteen-. Adjusting ride height or compression rate is a wheels-off job, and to access the rebound adjustment means removing bits of under-bonnet and boot trim. You’d want to take advice from main dealer before attempting it on your driveway, but it’d be possible - albeit more like the work of a couple of hours than ten minutes. The suspension manual doesn’t list the car’s ‘factory’ damper settings, though, so be warned: once you’ve started fiddling, you may not know what to turn the knobs back to unless you make a note.