2025 has been a rough year for fans of the petrol-powered hot hatch in Europe, with the two final holdouts of the traditional manual, front-wheel drive layout – the Ford Focus ST and Honda Civic Type R – both confirmed to be going off sale.
In fact, orders for the Ford closed a few months back, and now its story has come to an end, as the final Focus ST – a dark red estate – has been built at the manufacturer’s plant in Saarlouis, Germany.
The Focus ST has been a pretty ubiquitous presence in the European hot hatch market for nearly a quarter of a century, first appearing in 2002 with the ST170, based on the seminal first-gen Focus. With 167bhp from a 2.0-litre naturally aspirated engine, its specs seem modest by current standards, but it nevertheless laid the groundwork for many fast Focuses to come.
For its second gen, launched in 2005, the ST upped the ante with a snorty 225bhp turbocharged five-cylinder borrowed from Volvo, plus some suitably lurid colour schemes. A third gen arrived in 2012, now boasting 247bhp from a 2.0-litre turbo four-pot as well as the option of a torquey 300lb ft diesel.
Ford Focus ST Edition – rear
The fourth and final ST launched in 2019, bucking the industry trend for downsizing by moving to a 2.3-litre turbo four-cylinder, now producing 276bhp. It’s this version we’re now waving goodbye to, and the Focus as a whole will only last a couple of months longer, with production due to wind down by the end of the year without a direct replacement in sight.
It’s yet another victim of the public’s insatiable appetite for crossovers, with any future Focus-sized car from Ford likely to be a jacked-up faux-SUV, in the same vein in which the Puma effectively replaced the Fiesta. Whether we’ll even see any performance versions is unknown for now, but if we do, they’ll need to work hard to recapture the magic of the Focus ST at its best – never the all-round package of the Golf GTI, but always imbued with that Ford chassis excellence, and never dull.
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