Sep 14, 2024 at 10:00 am ET
The initial Ford Focus was a landmark vehicle. Seriously well-known and substantial selling, it revealed that Ford would be the standard-bearer for little vehicles in the brand-new centuries. Ford engineers consumed over the method the Focus drove, and the outcome was so excellent, it required everybody else to up their video game. Would like to know why the Mk5 Golf was a lot better to drive than the Mk4? It was this vehicle.
What made the Focus a genuine lover hero was rallying. Ford contracted M-Sport to construct a four-wheel drive, active-differential beast for the World Rally Championship, and paid Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz to drive it. In a brand-new video for Hagerty, the really fortunate Henry Catchpole gets to invest a long time in an ex-Sainz Focus WRC and describes what made this vehicle so unique.
While the first-gen Focus WRC never ever won a WRC Title, McRae racked up a number of unforgettable rally wins with the vehicle, with Sainz including 2 triumphes to the tally. McRae left the WRC after 2003, and Ford’s brand-new finalizing, Marko Martin handled 5 more success with this vehicle.
Like other WRC vehicles, the Focus was a technical marvel, with active center and front differentials, and a six-speed consecutive transmission coupled with a special stubby equipment lever growing from the guiding column. Gunther Steiner of F1 popularity led the advancement of the cars and truck, too.
The Focus WRC had an impact on the Focus RS roadway automobile, too, thanks to the work of Richard Parry-Jones. A Welshman and big rally lover himself, Parry-Jones is credited with the turn-around of Ford’s item in the 1990s and 2000s, and the Focus was his work of art. Catchpole drives a Focus RS roadway vehicle too, and though it’s most likely not the very best hot-hatch of its age, it’s an excellent tip of what made the Focus in general so unique.
The WRC automobile is a hell of a thing to drive. Effective, nimble, and a terrific mix of analog and digital.
Like the Mustang in the 1960s, the initial Focus represents Ford as its best. The Focus never ever had rather as huge an effect here in the States as it performed in the UK and Europe, however lovers get it. Regrettable it’s so difficult to discover a Focus SVT nowadays.
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