2018 Ford Focus RS Gets a $5,000 Price Hike, Sort Of

2018 will be the final year for the current iteration of the Ford Focus RS.

Shed a tear.

Now shed another tear for the old base price, because the old base Focus RS is done, CarsDirect says. For 2018, Ford is equipping every U.S.-bound edition of the Focus RS with a limited slip differential, the RS2 package, and 19-inch wheels.

As a result, the $36,995 2017 Ford Focus RS gives way to a $41,995 2018 Ford Focus RS.

Paging the Civic Type R. Civic Type R to the showroom.

Nah, probably not. The Focus RS will be thin on the ground for 2018. With only 1,000 copies imported to the U.S. from the Focus RS’s plant in Saarlouis, Germany, sufficient demand even at the full bore price is all but assured.

The $41,995 MSRP is uncomfortably high for muscle car fans. Ford’s Mustang GT, a 5.0-liter V8-powered coupe, stickers from $34,095. Even selecting the performance package barely ticks the Mustang GT’s price past $37K. The Mustang EcoBoost, which shares a powerplant with the Focus RS, is a whole ‘nuther, less expensive matter.

But while cross-shopping of the Mustang and Focus RS may occur, drawing parallels between Ford’s all-wheel-drive compact hatch and the rear-wheel-drive pony car is a mostly fruitless exercise.

The final 1,000 copies of the Ford Focus RS will more likely be purchased or leased because customers preferred the Ford over the Volkswagen Golf R, the sedan-only Subaru WRX STI, and the front-wheel-drive Honda Civic Type R, pricing for which has not yet been firmly announced. (Recent revelations lead us to believe the MSRP will slide in just under $35,000 for the 306-horsepower Civic hatch.)

Further suggesting demand won’t be a problem for the final 1,000 Focus RSs, CNET’s Roadshow reported a few months ago that Ford was selling around 500 copies of the Focus RS each month. The 2018 models may not last long at all.

The new $41,995 base price likely won’t be a problem, either. Road Show said the Focus RS’s average transaction price was $42,351.

[Image: Ford]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.