“You will see new technology in the Focus ST. I can’t tell you what yet,” Jost Capito says. Ford SVT PR flack Henry Platts chimes in, “We haven’t said anything about the suspension yet.” I’m at the Ford Special Vehicle Team headquarters in Allen Park, Michigan, just a few miles away from the mother ship in Dearborn. The topic of the meeting with Capito, Ford’s director of global performance vehicles and motorsport business development, is the RevoKnuckle, a trick articulated strut suspension that we explain in the April issue’s Tech Dept.
The RevoKnuckle is featured on Ford’s current, not-for-the-U.S. Focus RS. It came about early in the development of the RS, when engineers found that a four-wheel-drive prototype wasn’t more fun to drive than the lower-horsepower, front-wheel-drive Focus ST. Looking for solutions, Ford’s Team RS (SVT’s European counterpart) turned to the R&D group in Aachen, Germany, to provide the prototype of the RevoKnuckle. The result was an innovative design that offered the promise of less weight than a four-wheel-drive system and all but eliminated torque steer, even with 300 hp running through the front wheels. The production version on the Focus RS, which is an evolution of the prototype, is technically referred to as RevoKnuckle II.
The conversation naturally drifts to the upcoming 247-hp Focus ST. As with the rest of Ford’s products, performance vehicles and their development have been globalized. SVT and RS are unified under Capito, which means that, as long as the business case exists, North America will see the same fun Fords as the rest of the world. You can tell Capito is excited about the next ST, or maybe it’s just that he enjoys teasing American journalists, who have been begging for a hot-hatch Ford since the departure of the SVT Focus in 2004. In either case, Capito smiles far too often to be mistaken for the stereotypical humorless German engineer. He’s even upbeat enough that the thought of Michigan’s dreary winters doesn’t intimidate him. But then again, he’s probably had more fun than the stereotypical German engineer. Capito’s résumé reads like that of four people. Highlights include a truck-class win in the 1985 Paris-Dakar Rally with his father, work as a development engineer for BMW’s high-performance engines, and a long stint at Porsche’s racing division (there’s a clock in his office fashioned from a carbon-ceramic brake disc, which he received as a parting gift). Capito then went to Sauber’s Formula 1 team, eventually running the operation from 1998 to 2001. At Ford, Capito ran Team RS before coming to Michigan in 2009.
Speaking about Formula 1, Capito admits he prefers building road cars. In F1, “You do that for two guys, and you can’t drive it. I think the competition is much bigger in a road car.” Road cars are experienced by more people, he explains. Plus, parts can trickle down to everyday products. “That’s the exciting part of the job, seeing performance cars improve and then improving mainstream cars.” It’s no coincidence, then, that part of SVT’s mission is to act as a test bed for new technology. Capito goes into further detail, saying that every new SVT vehicle will come with something new.
So does that mean the Focus ST will get the RevoKnuckle suspension? Capito is noncommittal, but hints at something related. “What is clear is that everything we’ve learned we will use. Not necessarily with the same parts but the same results.” Capito also explains that, for performance vehicles, a mechanical solution is the only way to solve powertrain or handling issues. Don’t expect a brake-based, electronic “limited-slip” system on the ST, like the one included on all other Focii. “A high-performance car shouldn’t use electronics to overcome mechanical inefficiencies.”
I then mention that GM already uses its articulated strut, known as HiPer Strut, in cars like the Buick LaCrosse. Could we see RevoKnuckle in a future Taurus? Capito gives a philosophical “Yes.” Performance cars, he explains, have different priorities than mainstream products. Cost and weight are less of an issue, although all SVT vehicles have to meet the same internal Ford requirements as any other vehicle. High-volume production presents a different set of challenges, although he adds that “The lessons will apply. Technology that improves performance or character can also improve mainstream vehicles, even if it’s not the exact same part.”
What, and how much, technology actually trickles down from SVT to the rest of the Ford lineup remains to be seen. But the performance division’s current mission to act as a test lab to improve the way all Ford products drive should ensure a steady stream of halo cars for us enthusiasts. And with Capito, SVT is in capable hands.
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