This Used 297bhp Ford Focus ST Packs Near-RS Punch For Half The Price

Thanks to some tasty Mountune upgrades, this second-hand Focus ST has a power output approaching its RS big brother, for a much lower price

Matt Robinson

09 May 2016

This Used 297bhp Ford Focus ST Packs Near-RS Punch For Half The Price

Last week we found out that Mountune is in the process of readying its much anticipated ‘MP’ power upgrade for the new Focus RS. The reason it’s much anticipated is the existing Mountune MP performance packs for the Fiesta and Focus ST are approved by Ford itself, and therefore can be fitted without binning your warranty.

Because there are so few drawbacks with these upgrades, it’s no surprise they’re popular with Ford owners, meaning the used market is littered with Mountune’d Blue Oval cars. And inspired by last week’s Mountune news, we thought we’d pluck one out of the classifieds for closer inspection.

This one’s actually an MR pack - MR300 to be exact - so it’s not warranty-friendly like the MP275 Focus ST packs, but you get more power to play with here. Thanks to modifications including a remap, a new front-mount intercooler, high-flow charge pipe, dual-entry air filter and a cat-back exhaust, the power output has been bumped from 247 to 297bhp (300PS) and the torque raised to 347lb ft.

That puts this ST a lot closer to the 345bhp RS in terms of performance, with a 0-60mph time of 5.6 seconds - almost a second quicker than the stock car.

Of course, unlike the RS, the ST is still front-wheel drive, and as far we know a limited-slip differential hasn’t been added to this particular car. Given that the standard ST has issues putting its 247bhp through to the wheels, an extra 50bhp and 81lb ft will presumably make this quite a boisterous thing…

Tempted? The ST MR300 we’re looking at is up for £15,450 which - considering the sort of performance on offer and the reasonable 20,000 miles on the clock - doesn’t seem like a bad deal.

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

You have to look at the advantages. For example, when you want to turn right, you don’t even need the steering wheel anymore. Just feistily step on the throttle… and voilà, you torque steered around.

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Half the price of an RS and I’m still like;

347 lb-ft in a FWD car?
That won’t be f—king annoying at all trying to daily drive the thing. Every time you give it like a third throttle the wheels will spin or you’ll turn left when you actually were turning right.