It's all a little tricky to explain, as it's another case where the conventional wisdom about Focus suspension falls apart a little due to the changes in other areas.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I don't find this is against conventional wisdom at all... Well, I guess it depends on how much suspension tuning knowledge you have.
The concept of reducing front bar size to decrease understeer/increase oversteer is not really new.
I've been suggesting it for a while now, but nobody has done it. Currently, I've got all the oversteer I need because of the big farkin rear bar I've got. But I've suggested for a while that stock class autocrossers should use the S2 rear bar (1mm bigger than stock ZX3, same size as stock SVT), and swap the front bar for an SPI front bar, which is 1mm smaller than stock.
In this manner, since the rear end is doing more of the work trying to stop the body from rolling, the inside front has less roll stiffness, so it is not lifted as much when the body rolls. This results in increased traction in corners.
It would be interesting to see how my car performs compared to an RS when I'm done. To me, I can't help but think that compromises were made (ie: offset) to achieve that wider track that was mostly driven I think from marketting.
I mean, what was the MAIN reason for the wider track? Marketting, or because 2" wider track actually makes the car handle better?
I see marketting as being the driving force, and that the engineers just did the best they could with that requirement.
I wonder if a Focus with similar suspension and bushing settings would perform better than an RS.
