2017 Ford Focus RS Mountune FPM375

I’ve owned the RS from new in late 2016 after a long pre-order wait (I initially wanted a Golf R but VW couldn’t be less interested in my money). Shortly afterwards I asked Ford to install the Mountune upgrade because like the article says it took the car to the then heights of the Merc and the Audi which were class leaders at the time.

So what’s my experience been day to day of an FPM375 RS - on the whole excellent. Most of the time as a daily you can forget about it being a b-road monster and just drive to work sensibly, you can fit a bike in the back or on the roof with roof bars (it’s just a Focus after all) and fuel economy is reasonable if you are tender footed. The boot is marginally compromised because of the AWD system that eats up floor space, but you still have plenty of space for spare child seats or trips to the supermarket with a family of five.

But on a sunny evening, when the sun is low in the sky and the roads are quiet and you want to have some (safe) fun, the RS with added Mountune is a LOT of fun. A lot. It’s fast, it’s capable and the handling characteristics when you hit a corner marginally too fast are such that the car feels like it’s pivoting on the spot, almost like it has rear-wheel steering or you’re sitting on a swivel chair. I was blown away by this when I first got the car and I don’t think I’ll tire of it, in my previous car (a 2002 WRX, with Prodrive upgrade to 245Bhp) you’d approach a corner wide, point the car into the apex and floor it to get the car where you wanted it. It required some pre-preparedness and 100% concentration, left too late you’d run way wider than you wanted or would have to kill speed in a hurry. Not so the RS, follow the road line exactly and just point and squirt - the car literally does the rest sending power where it’s needed to make up for your shortfalls. Be warned though, the car is not ‘intelligent’ and sometimes gets confused between an overtake manoeuvre and a corner. Example - when I first got the car I was on a long straight stretch of road and came up to a car I wanted to overtake. As with my previous WRX I’d get quite close before attempting the overtake to make sure something fast didn’t come my way in the opposite direction. As I approached I duly indicated, pulled out and at the same time accelerated. The RS mistake this input as an instruction to go fast round a right hand bend - the end result was an injection of power to the inside left rear wheel which sent me heading toward the verge on the opposite side of the road. A lucky catch, several corrections later followed by a more sedate return to my ownlane and the car was once again pointing where it should be. Moral of this story, with great power comes great responsibility, also this particular generation of cars are clever but really just augment the driver rather than thinking for them (which the next generation will do). Basically if you’re stupid, the RS will amplify your stupidity.

So, day to day 375BHp is very easy to live with on normal roads and great for motorways, very little troubles you with that amount of power, and on wet and slippery conditions you’re not afraid to use it. The key thing is to be restrained, and when you do open the taps be aware the car can overthink a situation and try to be too clever by half. The level of grip is phenomenal though, and unlike my WRX I managed to hold on to the same set of front tyres for 3 years, the Scooby would munch through a pair per year thanks to it’s lowered and more aggressive Prodrive shocks. It’s also very easy to get a speeding ticket, I’ve had to attend a speed awareness course and then afterwards return to my RS in the car park with everyone no doubt thinking ‘that’s the guy’. I’ve also had my fair share of Golf Rs and Type R Civics surgically attached to my rear bumper and that is the downside of owning the rather obvious looking RS, people mistake you travelling from A to B as pistols at dawn, usually when you’re least in the mood. That said it was very satisfying outperforming a BMW X5M once which was probably twice the price of my RS and the driver definitely looked like he was having half the the amount of fun I was.

In summary the incremental gains you get from the Mountune’d RS were to me worth the price of entry, I have had to constantly inform my local Ford garage not to over flash the ECU with their seemingly yearly bug fixes and updates however and no one can tell me (for certain) if the various updates will or will not wipe Mountune’s. The cars works as well as before, but now the dial goes all the way to 11, even though there are only ten digits on display - it’s like secret power. I’ve also deliberately not put the Ford Performance boot sticker on the car as I feared that would attract even more rivals like sending up a flare saying “race me”.