And jeez, what's with all this bashing? And who cares if you have a college degree or not? Let's stay on topic now...

 

I think JNasty4G63 knows that the Evo isn't a wannabe DSM, which was the point he made after the Mazda was called a wannabe Evo/STi.

 

Yea, you totally missed my point. I know the cars are completely different, that was my point. Someone was trying to say that this new Mazda is just a wannabe Evo. I was simply stating that the Evo isn't exactly the first car to do the AWD/Turbo thing. Thats all. And, yes, the DSMs were offered in AWD from the start in '90.

Hilg

 

No, Mitsubishi didn't invent AWD and turbo, but I think they did the best at bringing it to the mainstream. In '91 you had three choices, Galant and 3000GT VR-4 and the GSX.

Mazda did have the little known but well loved 323GTX turbo AWD hatch back in '88 and '89.

 

Honestly, I would say either Subaru or Audi are better at getting AWD a mainstream thing. I mean, EVERY car that Subaru makes now is AWD. And, Audi has a name for their AWD system that everyone knows. You hear "Quattro" and you know someone is talking Audi and AWD. Mitsu has put it in many of their high performance vehicles, but for mainstream use, I say Suby and Audi. And yea, the 323 GTX was awesome. I couldnt drive back then, but a neighbor of mine had one. Even back then when I knew nothing about cars, I still could tell that car was cool. I would love to have Mazda come out with another car like that again. This 6 will be cool, but another hot hatch sleeper like that would rule.

Hilg

 

I'm surprised no one has brought up the relationship between Volvo, Mazda and Ford. Ford has a say in both of those companies. Let us think twin-turbo and all wheel drive, were have we seen that before, ah yes, the Volvo in line 6 twin turbo. Just a hunch that a twin- turbo set up might not be far off, but I don't think that it will be a four-banger.

 

I said AWD AND turbo. As in performance.

Audis can get pricey and most certainly are a bit too upscale for most. Subaru just brought the WRX in 2002. I'll have to check Audi's lineup in the early 90's, but it wasn't as diverse as Mitsu's. On a daily basis I will see far more Evos, GSXs, Vr-4's then I'll see Quattro turbos or WRX's and Sti's - even the latter two combined. And that is, of course, away from work.

 

Volvo never made a good twin turbo. They made one for the S80, but that engine is like 5 years old, and made for a big luxury car. They had a 5-cylinder single-turbo in the old 850, and then in the T5, and now in the S60R, V70R, and new S40 T5. Either way, I doubt it will be a Volvo engine. And, I highly doubt an I-6 will fit in the Maz-6 if you also have to cram an AWD t-case in there as well. I don't think they want to have to completely re-engineer the car just for one engine in a narrowly focused performance car. A turbo version of the I-4 they have now will be fine. And then, you just have to deal with some trans and t-case issues. But, thats much easier than trying to figure out how to get some other compays engine in a car that was never built for it.

Hilg

 

Audi created the 'Quattro' AWD system in the 80's, and it has since been offered on every car they build. They weren't all turbo, but they all had the option for 'Quattro' on them. And, when I think of Turbo and AWD, I obviously think Mitsu as well, but thats because I own one. But, the GSX was very rare compared to the rest of the DSM line. The G-VR4, well that was even more rare. They only sold a couple thousand of them in the states. And the 3000GT is the same. Sure, there are a lot of them running around, but very few are TT AWDs. Maybe its just the part of the country I live in, but I hardly ever see very many Mitsu-based AWD Turbo cars. I will admit that Mitsu is very well known for using it in their performance cars. But as a whole, I still think Suby and Audi more. Subaru alone has 4 cars right now with Turbo and AWD. That matches the Mitsu total, and its only one year. And, Audi has had it offered on every line as well. You have WRX (2.0T), Legacy (2.5T), Baja (2.5T), Forester (2.5T), A4 (1.8T), S4 (2.7TT), A6 (2.7TT), Allroad (2.7TT), RS6 (4.2TT), S8 (4.2TT)......and those are just the recent models. You see what I'm saying???

Hilg

 

Hmmmmm... the plot just thickened as Autocar has announced that the car is a sequential twin turbo 4. These guys are usually on the money with the stuff that they report abd have proved to be a very reliable source of info over the years. Here is the story:

http://www.autocarmagazine.com/news_...p?na_id=209344



" At the heart of the 6 MPS road car is the concept’s muscular turbocharged powertrain, six-speed manual gearbox and four-wheel drive. Peak power from the twin-turbocharged and intercooled 2.3-litre four-cylinder is tipped to match the concept’s 276bhp. Thanks to the turbocharger, it should develop a useful amount of torque for effortless performance. Expect a peak of around 265lb ft, developed at an accessible 3500rpm – that’s 5lb ft more than a BMW M3 but delivered 1400rpm lower down the rev range.

If Autocar’s sources are correct, the twin turbos deploy sequentially, the smaller boosting at low revs, the bigger across the rest of the range. This design keeps turbo lag to a minimum by using two fast-spinning turbos. Because both are smaller than one big blower, they have little inertia and therefore respond more quickly to throttle inputs.

Four-wheel drive should make the MPS a highly effective cross-country drive, particularly since the concept’s electronically controlled centre diff and limited-slip rear differential are expected to make production.

The MPS will cost around £24,000, undercutting opposition like the less powerful 250bhp Alfa Romeo 156 GTA."

I guess we will see what shows up next year at the dealers. I have heard that Mazda will try to keep the price at $29,000 US to make the car competitive with the STI and EVO.

Brett.

 

With the Mazda Ford relation and the Focus getting it's facelift and the SVT on hiatus, I wonder if a Focus 2.3L Turbo AWD is in the works? a 2700lb 280hp AWD 6 speed hot hatch would be VERY hot! in RS trim many folks put the handling right up with the Evo, just doesn't have the ponies to keep up.

 

If that ends up being true, I will stand corrected. I wouldn't think that trying to get twins to spin with a 4cyl would be that easy, even if its sequential. Even in sequential layout, the exhaust gasses have to spin 2 turbos. It is somewhat large for a 4cyl, but still there are only 4cyls worth of exhaust. But hey, maybe they can do it. I can't wait to see the real car, regardless of what the final spec of the engine is. This should be interesting.

Hilg

 

Like this:

http://www.autocarmagazine.com/News_...currentresults







"






Ford is preparing an all-new Focus RS offering a spectacular 280bhp, four-wheel drive, an active differential and a driving experience to rival the supreme performance of Mitsubishi’s latest Evo VIII MR. And it will look something like the car in our artist’s impressions on these pages. A Blue Oval alternative to the Mitsubishi, Subaru’s Impreza STi and the VW Golf R32, this latest RS, based on the all-new Focus that debuts this September, could be on sale by late 2007.

But despite the sell-out success of the last RS Focus, it is far from certain that this ambitious car will get the go-ahead. Ford’s challenge is not so much conceiving the car, but finding a way to make it at a profit.

The previous Focus RS retailed for £19,995, and lost the company several thousand on every one of the 4501 sold, a loss the company was prepared to stomach in order to burnish the reputation of the Focus and re-establish the credentials of the RS brand. But this time, a loss-maker will not be tolerated, and Ford has to find a way of making this complicated car efficiently enough to be able to sell it profitably. And although the essential specification of the car is clear, plenty of key technical questions remain, among them the choice of power unit. The 212bhp Duratec engine of the previous Focus RS has been reserved for the next-generation ST, and is not a suitable basis for providing the necessary 280bhp. But there are two other options, both of them drawn from other corners of the vast Ford organisation: a 276bhp 2261cc direct injection turbocharged Mazda engine, as shown in Mazda’s 6 MPS concept in 2003, or an upgraded version of the 2.5 T five-cylinder used in the Volvo S60 R, which produces 256bhp in its present form.

Of the two, the Mazda engine is the most likely. It is already being used in the current-generation Focus ZX4 ST in the US, where it has been relabeled Duratec. At the moment, the engine is restricted to 276bhp for the Japanese market, due to a gentlemen’s agreement to stick to this limit. But it’s undoubtedly capable of producing more power.

The Volvo unit offers the novelty of five cylinders, and it’s compact. If it carries a small weight penalty, it should have less of a bearing on the car’s handling balance thanks to the four-wheel drive system.

And four-wheel drive represents the major advance over the previous RS. Its output of 212bhp was reckoned to be close to the limit for a front-drive chassis, making an all-wheel drive solution essential. For reasons of cost, it will have D C to be based on existing hardware within the Ford empire, which is to be found at Volvo, as the Swedish company is developing a system for the S40 and V50 that will appear later this year. These two cars are of the same mechanical family as the new Focus, sharing the same C1 Global Shared Technologies set, which is why this Haldex system will be the starting point. However, it will need significant modification to suit the more extreme handling required for the RS, which will almost certainly employ an active centre differential, similar to the Mitsubishi Evo MR’s.

A major objective for this RS will be to align its specification and road behaviour more closely with the World Rally Championship Focus, to better capitalise on the publicity it gains. This is also why Team RS, the Ford division headed by Jost Capito and charged with developing RS and ST models, was formed back in 2003 with the merging of Motorsport and Special Vehicle engineering departments within Ford.

Team RS’s biggest challenge is undoubtedly finding a way to build the car at the company’s Saarlouis plant with minimum disruption to mainstream Focus production, and with limited costly reworking of the car. The assembly and IT systems in place during production of the previous RS required it to be deliberately fitted with the wrong parts in order to fool the factory computers into thinking that it had been built correctly. The bulky Sparco seats of the old car could not be installed by the robots, for instance, but in order to satisfy the assembly line computers that this process had occurred, the robot had to be allowed to install slave front seats, only for these to be manually removed in a dedicated finishing area. And the RS’s extra width meant that special slave wheels had to be made to allow it to run down the production line tracks.

Logistical challenges like these only added to the old model’s costs, and Ford will be looking to Team RS to come up with a more effective solution. The last car was also developed with major input from Prodrive, which was also charged with finding a way to build it. This time, it’s reckoned that more work will be done in-house – the alleged £30 million spent with Prodrive on the 4500 cars built last time made the economics near-impossible. Instead, the Banbury-based company could act as consultants to the project.

But the new car will not be short of features despite its greater complexity, and we can expect the products of WRC suppliers Brembo (brakes), Sparco (seats), OZ (wheels), Sachs Racing (dampers), Garrett Technologies (turbocharger) and AP Racing (clutch) to feature once again. The RS will also get a lightly modified interior, hopefully not as garish as the blue-splashed cabin of the old car.

Ford will be hoping to offer all this for usefully less than £30,000. And this time, perhaps, the RS Focus may be offered in colours besides blue. "



Brett.

 

Wow that RS must have been a real thorn in the bottom line, putting stuff on just to take it off to make some computer happy..

 

Must have been from outsourcing the IT folks to india. They either couldn't understand them or more likely they were constantly digging through the knowledge base and they couldn't find the answer on how to get robots to build the RS.