New Mountune Focus chucks out 365PS

Mountune’s latest “plug ‘n play” upgrade endows the ST’s turbocharged 2.3-litre four-pot with 365PS (272kW) – which is actually slightly more than the RS in standard form could muster. Mountune already offer a kit to extract 330PS (243kW) but the latest ECU upgrade hikes power further, taking power to 85PS (63kW) over that offered by the ST in standard form. Torque is up by 140Nm (104lb ft), now peaking at 560Nm (414lb ft).

The engine optimisation is done at home by plugging in Mountune’s Bluetooth OBD dongle and special app running on any smartphone or tablet. The price of the upgrade is £689 but for best results you also need some new hardware in the form of a high-flow air filter and high-flow downpipe with sports catalyst. Mountune says this latter item reduces exhaust gas back-pressure while ensuring emissions remain low enough to pass the MOT emissions test when the car is three years old.

What the new Mountune M365 kit doesn’t give you is the RS’s trick all-wheel-drive with torque vectoring, so how this new super-ST will behave with 365PS fed to the front wheels remains to be seen. Perhaps fans of the first infamous (front-drive) RS will love it… All Mountune says is that handling and everyday usability have not been sacrificed.

No performance data for the hottest ST yet but you’d think the last RS’s 0-62mph time of 4.7 seconds would have to be in the frame. Mountune David Mountain calls it “now a seriously fast car”.

As it should be with 365PS. Fifty years ago that’s the same order of power that another car in the news this week, the Lamborghini Countach, could call on… How times change.