Almost as soon as the word broke out that Ford Performance might have an even hotter Fiesta in the works, and to carry the RS badge, we now have strong indication that this is not the case.
That’s a shame, but considering how much performance the ST already delivers, one wonders how much more could they hope to push it without things getting silly.
Speculation on a Fiesta RS stemmed from a conversation Motoring had with Leo Roeks earlier this month, boss of Ford Performance Europe, when pressed on whether he was working on something beyond an ST for the company’s smallest hatch.
However, that might have been just a false flag or just a case of misinterpretation as Ford of Europe design director Amko Leenarts told AutoRAI, a dutch publication, that additional performance from a car of that size beyond what is already available in the Fiesta ST was “not necessary”.
He did not deny that it was definitely possible, though, especially since some of the hot Ford’s competitors seem to be open to the idea of bringing such models as the Volkswagen Polo R and an even hotter Renault Clio RS to market.
It’s unclear to what capacity Leenarts knows about the future plans of Ford’s performance division, or whether they would involve the broader design department at these early stages, but in the nearer term we do know that Ford does intend to supplement the current Fiesta ST’s six-speed manual transmission with a new (and much improved, apparently) dual-clutch transmission.
Just as well, what is very like the case is Ford Performance is already hard at work in preparing the new generation of Focus for the RS treatment instead, building on the solid foundation the previous all-wheel drive version laid down.
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