Focus RS
It's not just the RS, they're having a lot of problems with awd systems on most of their cars. They half assed the car into production. That's probably the reason why they stopped production until the next model year.
I want one also, but will wait until the late 2017-2018 MY's
For me that would also mean giving up 2 of our 4 cars if I was to buy soon. I'm not giving up the EVO!! I just can't do it man.
We'll see how much money I can stash away prior to Late 2017-2018, if Ford hasn't canceled them completely by then
For me that would also mean giving up 2 of our 4 cars if I was to buy soon. I'm not giving up the EVO!! I just can't do it man.
We'll see how much money I can stash away prior to Late 2017-2018, if Ford hasn't canceled them completely by then
I want one also, but will wait until the late 2017-2018 MY's
For me that would also mean giving up 2 of our 4 cars if I was to buy soon. I'm not giving up the EVO!! I just can't do it man.
We'll see how much money I can stash away prior to Late 2017-2018, if Ford hasn't canceled them completely by then
For me that would also mean giving up 2 of our 4 cars if I was to buy soon. I'm not giving up the EVO!! I just can't do it man.
We'll see how much money I can stash away prior to Late 2017-2018, if Ford hasn't canceled them completely by then
So, hmmmm............ LOL
I have a few friends that are a year older than me that finished their Mechanical engineering degrees and now work at ford. When I was looking for a car back in march I was heavily biased towards an FE X vs the sti but was considering the RS. My friends at ford told me that they don't trust the engineering on a lot of the products that they're putting out right now and they wouldn't buy one over an evo or sti if the opportunity presented itself.
It has nothing to do with book knowledge and everything to do with margins of safety. You don't need 10+ years of experience to recognize when a margin of safety is too low. Those cars are operating very close to the maximum capacity of their parts. This is evident when failures were seen on stock RS during track time. Whereas the evo for example is only operating at 50% to 65% of the maximum load in stock form.
Some day your friends will realize they don't actually know a thing about engineering (it took me a couple years) and pay attention to the old farts that seem like they're stuck in the 70s, but actually know what the hell they're doing. Engineering a street car isn't about making it fast on the track and never break, it's about balancing the demands of a lot of conflicting parties. Performance, price, quality, and reliability goals are all set (often by different groups), and those things are somewhat exclusive of each other. Throw in the time demands to meet a production schedule, and you end up with teething issues in early builds.
"I took a street car to the track and something broke! The engineering is ****!"
Some day your friends will realize they don't actually know a thing about engineering (it took me a couple years) and pay attention to the old farts that seem like they're stuck in the 70s, but actually know what the hell they're doing. Engineering a street car isn't about making it fast on the track and never break, it's about balancing the demands of a lot of conflicting parties. Performance, price, quality, and reliability goals are all set (often by different groups), and those things are somewhat exclusive of each other. Throw in the time demands to meet a production schedule, and you end up with teething issues in early builds.
Some day your friends will realize they don't actually know a thing about engineering (it took me a couple years) and pay attention to the old farts that seem like they're stuck in the 70s, but actually know what the hell they're doing. Engineering a street car isn't about making it fast on the track and never break, it's about balancing the demands of a lot of conflicting parties. Performance, price, quality, and reliability goals are all set (often by different groups), and those things are somewhat exclusive of each other. Throw in the time demands to meet a production schedule, and you end up with teething issues in early builds.
I don't disagree with you, but let me counter with this point. I remember when the X came out, it didn't have anywhere near the drivetrain issues that people have been talking about in the RS. And its a 10 year old design by comparison. Ford comes out with the RS and journalists are having trouble with stock power during testing? I never heard of reports like that in the X. I had heard about theating up the ACD pumps, but the car gives you a warning when that happens. What happens when customers turn up the heat on the RS? I agree with you on the balance in engineering bits, they cant make everything perfect, but when they're targeting this market (Rally Cars) they must have had to consider the X as the target to beat (even with its 10 year old design) and that they would need to leave room for improvement or a greater factor of safety on components. Right now its not clear if a stock RS is faster than a stock 10 year old X even with the ~50 hp advantage, yet initial reports point to the drivetrain being less durable. I'm not saying that its a crappy car and it forever will be, I'm saying there are concerns on the Quality of the Early models. They may rectify this in the future but from what I have heard Ford has been rushing a lot of their cars to market. I also recognize that the engineering may not be the driving factor in this. GM is pushing Vettes and Camaros as fast as they can make them and Dodge is moving Scat pack chargers and challengers as fast as they can make those.
The one article I read where the RDU over heated, the guy was drifiting a racetrack for 4-5 laps, in drift mode. That's some serious punishment on the rear diff, and it's likely that drift mode was never intended to be used in that fashion.
I don't disagree with you, but let me counter with this point. I remember when the X came out, it didn't have anywhere near the drivetrain issues that people have been talking about in the RS. And its a 10 year old design by comparison. Ford comes out with the RS and journalists are having trouble with stock power during testing? I never heard of reports like that in the X. I had heard about theating up the ACD pumps, but the car gives you a warning when that happens. What happens when customers turn up the heat on the RS? I agree with you on the balance in engineering bits, they cant make everything perfect, but when they're targeting this market (Rally Cars) they must have had to consider the X as the target to beat (even with its 10 year old design) and that they would need to leave room for improvement or a greater factor of safety on components. Right now its not clear if a stock RS is faster than a stock 10 year old X even with the ~50 hp advantage, yet initial reports point to the drivetrain being less durable. I'm not saying that its a crappy car and it forever will be, I'm saying there are concerns on the Quality of the Early models. They may rectify this in the future but from what I have heard Ford has been rushing a lot of their cars to market. I also recognize that the engineering may not be the driving factor in this. GM is pushing Vettes and Camaros as fast as they can make them and Dodge is moving Scat pack chargers and challengers as fast as they can make those.
Somebody is forgetting the SST issues on track.... ACD pump issues... etc
Like others have already stated, AYC has been out since 99 in the Evo, among other things that the X has.
I thought we already filtered out the ignorance, assumptions and fanboism from this thread?
Like others have already stated, AYC has been out since 99 in the Evo, among other things that the X has.
I thought we already filtered out the ignorance, assumptions and fanboism from this thread?
Last edited by razorlab; Aug 3, 2016 at 12:59 PM.
I don't disagree with you, but let me counter with this point. I remember when the X came out, it didn't have anywhere near the drivetrain issues that people have been talking about in the RS. And its a 10 year old design by comparison. Ford comes out with the RS and journalists are having trouble with stock power during testing? I never heard of reports like that in the X. I had heard about theating up the ACD pumps, but the car gives you a warning when that happens. What happens when customers turn up the heat on the RS? I agree with you on the balance in engineering bits, they cant make everything perfect, but when they're targeting this market (Rally Cars) they must have had to consider the X as the target to beat (even with its 10 year old design) and that they would need to leave room for improvement or a greater factor of safety on components. Right now its not clear if a stock RS is faster than a stock 10 year old X even with the ~50 hp advantage, yet initial reports point to the drivetrain being less durable. I'm not saying that its a crappy car and it forever will be, I'm saying there are concerns on the Quality of the Early models. They may rectify this in the future but from what I have heard Ford has been rushing a lot of their cars to market. I also recognize that the engineering may not be the driving factor in this. GM is pushing Vettes and Camaros as fast as they can make them and Dodge is moving Scat pack chargers and challengers as fast as they can make those.
Waiting isn't such a big deal because you have to really work to get one right now anyway.











