Ford Hot Hatches Get A Send-Off In Latest Forza Horizon 5 Update

It’s Forza Horizon 5 update time again, with the game getting a rather more restrained four new cars added for August compared to the nine that were included as both a free update and paid DLC for July.

There’s no such paid content this month, with the four new cars all added for free, and available to win through the Festival Playlist over the next four weeks. They’re grouped together under the theme ‘High Performance Dailies’, and also all share a common theme in that they’re cars not long for this world.

One of these is the final Ford Fiesta ST. The old Mk7 version has been a staple of the Forza series almost since it launched, but this is the first time the Mk8 – the final generation of Fiesta, which ended production last year – has been featured in road-going guise. It’s the post-facelift ST, which makes 197bhp from a warbly little 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder. One of the very last entrants in the small hot hatch genre, its demise last year was met with mourning across the automotive world, so it’s good to see it immortalised digitally.

Soon to follow the Fiesta out of production is its big brother, the Focus, which is set to be dropped next year. Perhaps anticipating another outpouring of grief, Playground Games has added the latest and final hot version of the family hatch to the game, too. The Mk4 Focus ST is the first fourth-gen Focus to feature in Forza, and kicks out 276bhp from a 2.3-litre turbo four.

Moving away from hot hatches and from Ford, the update also sees the inclusion of the Toyota Camry TRD. While we can’t buy the Camry in Europe (there was a brief and hopelessly unsuccessful crack at selling it here a few years ago), the mid-size saloon is still a common sight in North America, although the TRD version, which packs a 300bhp 3.0-litre V6, is being dropped for 2025, leaving the Camry as a four-pot only.

Another big engine that’s very much on borrowed time is Chrysler’s stonking 6.2-litre supercharged Hemi V8. One of the very last cars it found a home in was the Dodge Durango, which appears in 2021 SRT Hellcat guise as part of this update. This enormous seven-seat SUV makes 710bhp, and is set to be shuffled out of production any day now, leaving the Hellcat V8 as a thing of the past.

As well as the new cars, the update adds four new race routes across the game’s Mexico setting, a new player outfit and a new prop for the game’s Eventlab race creator. It’s available to download now on both Xbox One and Series S/X.