MODIFYING GUIDE MK2 FOCUS ST

If there’s one car that epitomises the modern fast Ford tuning scene, it’s a bright orange Focus ST. When it arrived in 2005, the ST225 (as it soon became dubbed thanks to its 225PS/222bhp turbocharged engine) brought some much-needed performance credentials to the second-generation Focus. Its playfulness, endless grunt, and the sheer fun factor of driving one meant it was an immediate hit.

And not just a hit with buyers, but the modifying scene too, which soon realised that the Volvo-sourced five-cylinder could be persuaded to dish out much more than factory 222bhp. That coincided with the arrival of OBD-port tuning, allowing owners to remap the car from the comfort of their own driveway, and on the ST it yielded particularly impressive results of 40-to-50bhp gains.

This was coupled with the fact that many tuners had already seen great success with the same engine in fast Volvos, and it didn’t take long before UK companies seized on the information available and were able to offer significant power upgrades, almost overnight. Something of a performance tuning arms race began at once; tuners and specialists all had STs on their fleets of demo cars, and new performance tuning products came to the market seemingly every week.

At first, simple bolt-on mods gave the factory power a boost to around 300bhp, but it wasn’t long before full builds and bigger turbos were emerging.

Then, ST tuning took another leap forward in 2009 when the RS model arrived.