Ford is set to unveil its latest Focus RS February 3, and that’s got car fans all hot and bothered, but could the Blue Oval already be working on another RS model?
Just as the current Focus ST has a baby brother in the Fiesta ST, a Fiesta RS is in the pipeline to match the Focus RS, according to Autocar.
The Fiesta RS will reportedly be based on the current-generation Fiesta, which means it will probably appear sometime in the next two and a half years, before the car is redesigned.
That follows Ford’s past practice with the Focus RS. Previous generations were introduced near the end of the model cycle to generate interest in aging cars.
The Fiesta RS hasn’t been confirmed for production, but if Ford does build it you can expect performance well above that of the current ST, maintaining the same hierarchy as the Focus ST and RS.
The ST uses a 1.6-liter EcoBoost turbocharged four-cylinder engine, and its 197 horsepower and 202 pound-feet of torque leaves plenty of room for improvement.
All-wheel drive is rumored for the Focus RS, but it’s hard to say whether Ford would include this feature in a Fiesta RS. It would certainly tie the RS to the Fiesta rally cars used in events like the Red Bull Global Rallycross Championship, though.
There’s certainly room for another model in Ford’s performance strategy, which calls for 12 new models worldwide between now and 2020.
That includes the Focus RS, as well as the trio of performance cars unveiled at the recent Detroit Auto Show: the Mustang GT350R, a new Raptor based on the aluminum-bodied 2015 F-150, and the 600-hp GT supercar.
