The Ford Focus ST Edition Has Manually Adjustable Coilovers And A Special Shade Of Blue

If merely pressing a ‘sport’ button to firm up the ride doesn’t seem interesting enough, Ford has a hot hatch for you. Like the Fiesta ST Edition revealed last year, it comes with a special set of coilovers that allow for all kinds of fiddling. Buy one of these, and your track days will become a whole lot geekier.

Developed by KW, the setup features twin-tube stainless steel dampers paired with springs powder-coated in Ford Performance Blue. As well as being rather pretty, the springs rate on these is increased by 50 per cent.

Out of the box, the Edition sits 10mm lower than a regular ST. If desired, you can drop the car by 20mm. Meanwhile, there are 12 settings for compression, and 15 for rebound. Thankfully, you don’t have to be an expert in chassis tuning before tweaking, as Ford has handily included a document recommending setups for various driving scenarios, one of which inevitably involves tearing around the Nurburgring.

What we don’t yet know is how easy it is to access the adjusters for the coilovers. On the Fiesta, it’s a bit of a faff - one needs to remove all the scuttle trim from the base of the windscreen to access the controls at the front while changing stuff at the rear isn’t possible unless boot dressing is taken off. We’ve asked Ford for more detail and will update this piece when we receive it.

To go with the uprated suspension, the Edition gets the same set of 19-inch wheels made using a process called ‘flow forming’. This involves applying pressure to the inner barrel of the wheel after it’s been cast, compressing the aluminium and in the process adding strength. Each of the fancy wheels is 10 per cent lighter than the standard ST’s rims, amounting to a decent reduction in unsprung mass. Boosting the car’s visual appeal further is the use of Azura Blue paintwork, which is exclusive to the Edition.

Otherwise, it’s as per the standard car. That means there’s a 2.3-litre Ecoboost inline-four turbo engine providing 276bhp and 310lb ft of torque, which is shoved to the front wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox and an electronically-controlled locking differential. You can’t have an Edition with an automatic transmission, which is fine by us - we weren’t too impressed with the auto Focus ST when we tried it last year.

The ST Edition is available to order now in a handful of European markets, one of which is the UK. Here, it’ll cost you £35,785, which is £2500 more than a standard ST. Seems like a no-brainer to us.