Ford Focus RS in the United States? Impossible

Despite rumors hinting that the United States might get the Ford Focus RS after all, Jost Capito, in charge of Ford's performance road cars in Europe, revealed that the American company doesn't plan to bring the RS in its domestic market. The reason? The car doesn't comply with North American regulations and adjusting it just for this reason is too costly at this time and the company cannot afford it.

Capito made the statement in an interview for autocar.co.uk, also adding that the company will still struggle to design the same performance engines for both Europe and North America, as an attempt to reduce costs required by two different versions addressed to each separate market.

"We have to. It would be too costly to engineer different engines for Europe and North America. Remember that powerplants are downsizing and getting closer in concept in North America and Europe, like the new EcoBoost turbo engines," he said in the interview. But the Focus RS won't be launched in the United States, he said. "We’d like to, but the base car isn’t homologated for North America, and that’s too costly a job to carry out just for a niche vehicle like the RS."

Rumors regarding Focus RS' launch in the United States have longly surfaced and, at a certain time, they were even backed by some Ford officials. Ford’s director of advanced product creation and global performance, Hermann Salenbauch, said in April that Ford might after all launch the high-performance Focus in the United States but, even if everything goes according to the plan, the model won't arrive sooner than 2012.