First Drive: Pokémon Go! with a Ford Focus RS

Rational thinking goes out of the window with the Focus RS, this thing oozes emotion.

The Ford Focus RS has been reviewed to death by now but that did in no way stop us from testing it ourselves. It is, without doubt, the most talked-about hot hatch of the moment, or should we say super hatch? We should use the term 'super' for this car, for its not only very quick, but it's also a massive bargain.

Price-wise the near 1600 kilogram RS is almost an odd one out. Compare it to anything with similar output and nothing comes close in its price range of, in our Dutch case, 54.955 euros. Its engine output comes in at 350 horsepower and 470 Nm of torque, awfully close to the AMG A45 and the Audi RS3. Also all-wheel-drive super hatches. But at almost half the price and with negligible performance differences, so there has to be something bad about this car right?

Its face screams 'oh nomnom'

Well actually, there isn't. If you take into account that you're driving a Ford and not a German premium. This immediately kills off any comparison you'd make between the interiors. The fact that this actually is being compared only further confirms how close the RS is to the crazy expensive A45 and RS3. And it comes with a freaking manual and a properly working adaptive suspension system!

Driving the Focus RS is very rewarding to the senses. Ears get treated to a lovely exhaust note, the skins rest on a leather steering wheel or on the short-shifting gear knob, feet on the race-inspired pedals and our asses on optional Recaro bucket seats. The G forces rewardingly pull on you during the 4.7 seconds it takes to get to a hundred. Then there's the confidence the torque vectoring system gives, it's highly communicative and extremely more potent than you can test on public roads. Even the heat of the reworked 2.3-liter Mustang EcoBoost engine when you get out after a driver gives a sense of reward. And we're not even mentioning the torque-rich character of the engine in this list! Oh wait, we just did.

We had to think really hard about what we didn't like about the Ford Focus RS. And to be honest, we didn't get any further then "yeah the rear looks kind of weird." The Focus RS is simply put a very worthy successor to the RS family. Driving it is engaging, entertaining and terribly hard to keep your drivers licence with. The 6-speed manual and drive train are better than your average human marriage and to top it all off, Mountune has just released a warranty preserving ecu tune.