If you’re like me, you may be still mourning the end of production of the Ford Focus RS. It was legitimately one of the best hot hatches ever made. Its short 2016–2018 run meant not many people got a chance to get their hands on one, and high dealer markups didn’t help. Now, over five years after it ended production, Focus RS’ are showing up for cheap on the used market — so cheap that any enthusiast on a budget should be looking at them right now.
We got some performance versions of the Focus, but they were few and far inbetween, and we didn’t get the first two generations of Focus RS. Six years after the Focus ST hit our shores Ford did us a solid and finally gave us the Focus RS in 2016, and its specs were the stuff of hot hatch dreams. Born of the union of North America’s SVT team, Ford Europe’s Team RS and Ford Australia’s FPV (Ford Performance Vehicles) division, the Focus RS took the EcoBoost turbocharged 2.3-liter inline-4 from the Mustang and bumped up power to 350 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque. It had a six-speed manual transmission with rev matching, and best of all, a slick torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system with a drift mode. The Focus RS could hit 60 mph in just over four seconds, and it also looked the part with dark alloy wheels, lowered suspension, a big rear wing and fantastic Recaro sport seats.
While this hot hatch originally costed over $40,000, and markups saw it being sold for $60,000 in some places, the years have seen Focus RS prices drop. Excluding the sketchy ones that were driven and wrecked by douchebros, I was able to find over just under 70 Focus RS’ for sale in $20,000–$30,000 range. If you can deal with higher miles, there’s bargains to be had.
Take this 2017 Focus RS for sale in Linden, New Jersey. While it has almost 127,000 miles, the dealer is asking just $23,397 for it. Fewer miles lead to more expensive prices of course, but you can still find nicer ones for a decent price, like this 2016 RS for sale at a dealer in Bend, Oregon with 64,722 miles on it for $29,500. You can find some with under 30,000 miles, but they’re still selling close to or just over $35,000 — that still isn’t bad, but it’s also new compact performance car money.
While a Focus RS at these cheap prices is tempting, there’s a downside. Aside from the high miles, many of the cheap RS are the 2016–2017 model years, the prime range for the car’s notorious head gasket issues. I would assume many of these cars have had the recall and fix performed, but if you do find yourself looking at an RS in this year range, double check to make sure that the head gasket recall has been performed. If that’s been done you’re good to go.
With performance compacts like the Volkswagen Golf R, Honda Civic Type R and Hyundai Elantra N still getting marked up and the current generation Subaru WRX not as good a performer as it once was, a cheap used Focus RS is a no-brainer buy.