Anyone who goes boating in East Anglia will be familiar with the traditional Fenland hymn ' For those in peril on the Cam.' Frequently sung by the Norfolk Broads and other female groups, it could equally apply to a few cars I have driven, in which being up on the cam was tantamount to risking life and limb.
How many people, I wonder, have invested in performance metal only to find the car too hot to handle or that race-tuned suspension is not so much fun on the cobbled streets of Birmingham. I am not thinking of the likes of Porsches and Ferraris but rather the spiced-up family hatches that seem to top every manufacturers' food chain.
So when Ford announced the Focus ST 170, with it's exclusive VVT engine delivering 33 per cent more power than the existing 2.0-litre Zetec model, I half expected it to be a bit of a handful. Not so. Exploiting the much-praised Focus platform, it proves that Ford's seminal fleet car is what we always suspected - a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Ford's Special Vehicle Engineering division at Dunton has a long and distinguished career as the progenitors of sex-on-wheels. The Escort Mexico, Sierra XR4 and, more recently, the seminal Escort Cosworth were all from that particular stable and as the ST follows suit you can expect something special. And that means more than just straight-line performance. Tractability is high on the agenda, as is not losing sight of the fact that this car is not just a toy. It has a job of work to do as well, and dialling out day-to-day driveability in favour of pure muscle-tone is not their trademark.
As you might expect, the suspension geometry has been tweaked in favour of a firmer ride, with less roll, but not to such an extent that ride quality notably suffers. Focii naturally handle well and the best just got better although some evidence of bump self-steer is evident on poor road surfaces. To a keen driver, this is not a problem except in very slippery conditions when a softer platform is ultimately safer. Under heavy acceleration, there is also the merest hint of torque steer, which can be viewed as no more than a slightly mischievous grin on the face of a car intended to offer accessible performance to novices and old hands alike.
With peak horsepower occurring just a few hundred rpm short of the red line, this car begs to be driven on the cam. Or does it? Enter the sheep in sheep's clothing. With a fairly rich spread of torque over the middle range of engine speed, it is perfectly possible to drive this car just as you would one of the coat-hanger models. This is not a peaky, twitchy sort of car. If you never went above 4000 rpm it wouldn't complain and, cosmetics aside, your granny might not know the difference except perhaps to wonder where the extra gear came from.
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