2017 Ford Focus RS: Regular Car Reviews

[00:05] sunned itself in 350 sunned itself in 350 rays of horsepower. From 2016 to 2018, rays of horsepower. From 2016 to 2018, Ford blessed all of us with the greatest

[00:17] Ford blessed all of us with the greatest hot hatch ever made. I'm too busy. This thing is quick even when you're not in sport mode. And it

[00:29] shifts. And when I say shifts, I mean the most dramatic difference of any car between normal mode and sport mode. All right, can I take my eyes off the road just for

[00:42] a second? Just for a second. Drive mode. Just for a second. Drive mode. There it is. There's sport. of the first cars in the United States to come with a pop tune. This

[00:58] turbocharged all-wheel-drive boulevard and back road bullet went zero boulevard and back road bullet went zero to 60 in 4 and 1/2 seconds in ideal conditions and 4.7 seconds in reality.

[01:12] Yes. Someone's going to win a Focus RS. Click on the link in the description. Go to fanatdem.com/regularcars.

[01:24] Buy some limited edition merch and some lucky person is going to get this Focus RS delivered to them. I should mention that about the giveaways. You don't have to come pick it up. Justin Burnash is going to put this on a truck and just

[01:38] >> The active center differential helped this four-wheeled energy drink hold one G of lateral acceleration. And the electronically controlled rear diff could favor the rear wheels in drift mode, one of the first cars to ever have

[01:52] such a hooligan feature. The Ford Focus RS was a car built for misbehavior. And on top of this, Ford said, "Oh, automatic transmission?

[02:04] No. No, we're not doing it. Everyone will be manual transmission only. Learn will be manual transmission only. Learn to drive." If I lower my window, can you hear the pops and bangs?

[02:26] There it go. There it goes. Okay. Yes, Focus RS's have a pop and bang tune. Is it the same as a BMW every BMW bros who has a pop bang tune aftermarket? No.

[02:42] You know what it sounds like? It just sounds like sounds like uh It just sounds like a textbook hitting a carpet.

[02:56] hear. The top speed, 165 mph. And that's significant because it's 10 mph faster than most stock Euro cars,

[03:08] which hit fuel cut at 155. Take that. Ford wanted to end the conversation over who made the best hot hatch. We're Ford. We won the WRC three times, but all you chuckle nuts are still talking about

[03:24] chuckle nuts are still talking about Subaru. Oh, you want a WRX? I'll give you a WRX times 10. I'm going to give you something that will drift circles around your WRX, hold its value better, and come with a Sony sound system with

[03:38] an integrated subwoofer. The RS was as close as Ford Performance ever got to being as white powder crazy AS MOPAR. >> [snorts] >> YES. YOU KNOW THE ECOBOOST turbo 4 WE HAVE IN

[03:53] >> [snorts] >> YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. YEAH. What if What if we turn it sideways? Yeah, and put it in the Focus. Yeah, and have it what What's your Bobby? What what what

[04:07] What am I 310 horsepower? 350. Make it make more. Yeah. Yeah, and while you're doing that, have it drive all four wheels. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. I know the Focus is a front-wheel drive

[04:20] platform. Yeah, it's it's a little economy car. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a to make room for a drive shaft and a rear differential? Half shafts and enough strength laying to take 350 lb ft of torque, too, huh?

[04:33] like, "Hey, LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL." YEAH. I I I SAID 350 torque and 350 horsepower. Yeah. Balanced. I am a balanced guy. Business during the day and a suppository pogo stick at night.

[04:55] by 2026 standards. There's a lot of weird sightlines and angles and and and and odd vectors that the HVAC vents are the strange V and they draw your attention to about the volume knob for your stereo.

[05:10] modern. You're not going to have to worry about trying to retrofit an old car to work with your phone. Gosh darn it, I just called this car old. It's only 10 years old, but the styling

[05:24] here is very 2010s. A lot of action. A lot of showiness. It's a It's like a a maximalist design. You paid a lot of money for this car, so we're make We're going to make a lot of different stuff to look at in here.

[05:39] There are three criticisms I have with the Focus RS. One is style. One is engineering. And the third is managerial. Number one, the stock wheels on the RS. These were obnoxious 19-in that filled the wheel

[05:55] obnoxious 19-in that filled the wheel wells and wore rubber band 235 35 19 wells and wore rubber band 235 35 19 tires. When we drove an RS new in 2016, we thought the ride was too rough. It was like Dick riding a floor jack while

[06:08] someone pulled it along a gravel driveway. I get why Ford put 19s on here. It was the 2010s and big wheels on small cars were in. Take Reggie Watts song that came out in I think 2011. It

[06:21] was called [ __ ] Stack. The music video blew up around then featuring a car-centric line. I take a piece of [ __ ] car and I lower the [ __ ] put some 18-in rims on the [ __ ] Yeah, that. I mean, Ford was just

[06:35] following the trends at the expense of ride quality. The solution is what you see here, to go to go down a wheel size and buck trends. So, you could run a thicker tire, improve ride quality, and have more options for summer and track

[06:51] tires. And the good thing here is that rotors and the calipers were small enough that you could go a wheel size down. Gripe number two, you knew this was coming if you know anything about the RS, the wrong head gasket issue. So,

[07:05] here's what happened. Some Focus RSs were assembled using Mustang head gaskets instead of RS-specific head gaskets. So, I mean, what You're cars use the same engine, the 2.3 L EcoBoost. They should use the same head

[07:20] gaskets, right? Wrong. The RSs are different. So, the Mustang head gasket had a V-shaped depression between the tops of the cylinder bores. The RS gasket didn't have that. So, that

[07:33] V-shaped depression apparently led to coolant like lagging stagnant in there, not circulating, and causing a weak spot in the gasket which then led to the

[07:45] leak. Not all RS's had this problem. See, it was a logistical problem. The wrong head gaskets showed up to the wrong assembly line. And because the head gaskets fit and look 99% identical, on they went that day. Ford issued a

[07:59] recall for all for all Focus RS's built between August 3rd, 2015 and July 6th, 2017. And this RS is from that era, but thankfully, this is one of the RS's that received the correct head gaskets. And gripe number three, forced scarcity.

[08:15] gripe number three, forced scarcity. Ford only made about 34,034 units worldwide, and that number comes from a the forum consensus. Now, of that 34,000-ish, about 15,000 came to the US and Canada.

[08:30] That means only 5,000 per year on average were available to buy. I'm rounding here to make a point. In 2026, there are today 2,821 registered Ford dealerships in the

[08:45] United States. I'm assuming there's going to be a similar amount 10 years going to be a similar amount 10 years ago, give or take. So, 5,000 RS's divided by 2,821 dealerships is 1.77.

[08:59] So, if the RS's were distributed evenly, each dealership would get one, and some would get two. But of course, that didn't happen. Most Focus RS's were white glove delivered to high-performing dealerships in major cities like

[09:13] Glengarry leads, LA, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Philly, DC, Baltimore, Charlotte, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Sal Ed, Phoenix, Vegas, and maybe Pittsburgh. Ford dealerships in those cities had one RS in the

[09:27] showroom and maybe one or two in the warehouse. But if you were in flyover country and you wanted an RS, you had to go into your local Ford a ask the sales manager to put in an order for you, and then listen to him insult

[09:40] you for 11 minutes. Woah! OH, YOU WANT AN RS? OH, OH, LOOK AT WE GOT KEN BLOCK RIGHT HERE. OH,

[09:52] YOU GOING TO be a race CAR DRIVER? HEY EDDIE! HEY EDDIE, GET IN HERE. TH- TH- THIS HOTSHOT WANTS AN RS. LET'S GIVE HIM A HAND. AND THEN, Fast Eddie Mordenham,

[10:04] the number one Ford sales associate in Evansville, Indiana, wobbles fatly into the manager's office, fly open, reading glasses on a chain, dried spit on the corners of his chapped lip mouth from a lifetime of dehydration, the unavoidable

[10:19] result of drinking cherry Coke instead of water. WELL, I'M FAST EDDIE. AND I DON'T SEE ANY GREENBACKS COMING OUT OF YOUR POCKET, SON. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET AN RS WITHOUT THAT DO-RE-MI, HUH? HUH? WHAT DO YOU GOT TO

[10:36] SAY ABOUT THAT? AND YOU GOT TO SIT THERE getting it from both ears from losers because you want a fun car. I talked to RS owners when these things were new. Every single one of them, unless they

[10:50] were in a high-value dealership area, got that sort of treatment. You know why? Because the dealerships could get away with it. The RSs were so rare, they were charging $10,000 over sticker for these things. They weren't budging.

[11:05] There were no deals. You could barely get them. Oh, you could be put on a a half. When these things went out of production, there were still people waiting for them. That's how rare this was. There were There was no competition

[11:19] against the RS. The Civic Type R was rumored that it might be here. The GR Corolla was years away. It was just Ford and Subaru. And by By mid-2010s, the

[11:31] craziness had left Subaru. I remember driving the WRX from that era and I'm "It's quick, but so what?" It didn't have that craziness. It didn't have that wild side. That's what the RS gave you, the sense of danger. Well, it

[11:47] was real danger, wasn't it? It's got a drift mode. It looks angry. It pops and bangs out the rear. So, dealerships could charge whatever they wanted for these things because there would be somebody who had money who would pay for

[12:01] it. And that's part of the mystique around this car. It changed car culture, thumbed its nose at Subaru, even thumbed its nose at its own brand, at the Mustang. This thing was faster than the EcoBoost Mustang four-cylinder. And

[12:15] then, after a few short years, it was gone. Look around the used market, and Ford Focus RSs are still trading hands for $20,000 today. I'm having a blast with this Ford Focus RS, and you will, too. Thank you

[12:31] so much for taking part in these giveaways. You're helping Regular Car Reviews continue on in this strange age of AI slop, and it gives me a sense of pride that we're still one of the few YouTube channels that are 100%

[12:46] handwritten. No shortcuts taken with these videos. And it's because of these giveaways that we can defy the algorithm, defy YouTube AdSense. We can continue to have the ability to produce content like this, to go out and visit

[13:01] people, to go on adventures. So, please, enter this giveaway for this Ford Focus RS. You're helping Regular Car Reviews, and one of you is going to go home with their very own hot hatch. Click on the link in the description, and go to

[13:15] link in the description, and go to fanahem.com/regularcars. helping this channel out, and someone's going to have their very own Ford Focus Thank you so much. Thank you for liking

[13:28] Thank you so much. Thank you for liking Regular Car Reviews.