The above was a Cobb Tuning live video session that occurred today.

They dyno’d a Ford Focus RS.  The car was stock.  In fact, they dyno’d it four times.  The first two pulls were with the stock tune.  The latter two pulls were with a Cobb AP tune (stage 1).

The guy in the video stated that he’d heard that a lot of people were thinking the car was overrated from the factory and that they wanted to test to see if it was true.

[SPOILER ALERT – Stop reading now if you’d like to watch the video to see the results!]

Well, the first two pulls netted 301 WHP and 340 lb-ft of torque.  The last two pulls netted 313 WHP and 360 lb-ft of torque.

Now, my concern is that current RS owners say they aren’t getting full boost on a consistent basis (ie, they’re not getting the full power on demand, every time they run the car hard).  Yes, different atmospheric  conditions will dictate how well the car runs, but if your car is only generating 250 WHP when you want the full Monte, that’s a problem.  The cars are probably dialing back boost when ambient temps are high.  The Cobb test car was run in Texas, where it’s in the low to mid 90s today.  The dyno testing didn’t see any anomalies but their testing isn’t what the mag publishers’ test numbers are showing.  The mag publishers are showing discrepancies (the cars are not generating what it should, HP-wise).

Cobb needs to test more, IMO.  Or maybe they don’t care enough to investigate further…after all, it isn’t their problem.

Regarding the HP numbers of the dyno runs, the car saw rather significant gains when going stage 1, but this car is already putting out serious amounts of power.  How much more before the car either stops generating nothing but heat (or a thrown rod or cracked piston)?