SLIDE RULER

Focus RS is fast, fun and super safe

FROM about April onwards a strange phenomenon will emerge…

Objects looking like black crop circles will mysteriously appear on large expanses of tarmac such as Tesco, Morrisons and Asda car parks.

Y’see the new Focus RS – a 350bhp, all-wheel-drive yob of a car – comes with a button to allow it to drift like a champ.

You will have the guiding, invisible hand of advanced traction control to help you through. But this is only one of its tricks. Riding on optional 19in forged alloys (£600) and ridiculously grippy Michelin tyres you will also be able to generate more than 1G of lateral grip.

That’s the sort of force that changes the shape of your face…and your stomach contents.

Press the middle pedal hard and the gargantuan Brembo brake calipers create similar forces but in the fore and aft plane.

Depress the right pedal and the twin scroll turbocharger produces the sort of relentless thrust normally associated with gut-churning fairground rides.

It’s a full-on assault on the senses. And the noise is all part of the fun.

There are four selectable driving modes – Normal, Sport, Track and Drift.

In anything but Normal the RS changes its exhaust note (also its steering speed, suspension settings and throttle sensitivity) to a banging, snapping, crackling, popping affair the instant you lift off the gas. I’m praying none of my neighbours plans on buying an RS, especially those who work shifts. It’s loud enough to make cyclists and pedestrians jump.

This car has been more than two years in the making and it really shows in one particular area. Weirdly, it’s none of the above.

For such a stupidly fast machine it is practically impossible to crash.

On the edge of grip and disaster, where you mis-read the severity of corner or are perhaps too ambitious with the application of power midturn, the Focus RS doesn’t so much communicate as shout at you…through a megaphone! The feedback is massive.

That GKN four-wheel drive system is a work of art. Ford’s brains have built in the feel of a rear-wheel drive car but with the benefits of four-wheel drive. Push hard into a corner and it will understeer. But this is easily rectified by applying power to tighten your line.

On road or track you find yourself driving it like a rear-wheel drive car, controlling the floaty, predictable balance on the throttle.

Up to 70% of torque can be delivered to the rear wheels. Or just one rear outside wheel if that is what’s needed to help it tighten its line.

With so much advanced (but unobtrusive) traction control assistance it really does flatter even the most ham-fisted driver (waves hello).

You can absolutely nail the gas on the exits of corners and the invisible hand of God (traction control and torque splitting diffs between left and right and front to back wheels) makes you look every inch the demon helmsman. It’s been much discussed and admired on geeky web forums the world over. I guess the RS’s ace card isn’t outright performance – something it has by the skip-full (and for the money – nothing gets close) – it’s balance and poise. Oh, and “uncrashability”.

There are two downsides. Well, there had to be some. She’s a bit of a cakey pig. At 1.6 tonnes, this five-door hatchback is going to punish its tyres and brakes if you drive it like we all did for our two-day Spanish test drive. Three laps of savage lappery was all it took to reduce the front brake pads to a smokey, stinking mess. That’s a BMI issue, right there. My other complaint is the driving seat is two or three inches too high.

That’s it. Those 3,000 people who have pre-ordered can sleep at night because they have bought an amazing car at a knockdown price.

Fans of leasing plans might like to know it can be had for £299 a month.

But it might pay to find a cheap source of tyres. You’ll need plenty of them.