Following a recent sighting at the 'Ring, the 2020 Ford Focus ST hot hatch has been spotted again, but this time in the U.S. of A. The car above was found in Colorado with Michigan manufacturer plates. It's shown with no camouflage, and hooked up to a trailer, making the car sit really low in the rear.
Aside from the towing abuse, the car looks good, if restrained compared with the current model. Up front, the fascia appears to be identical to the 2019 Focus with the ST-Line appearance package. The only real change is that some of the body work that separates the fog light area with the lower grille has been painted gloss black, likely to make that area look enlarged and more aggressive. We can also spy an ST badge that's been taped up.
The rear is also only slightly different from the ST-Line Focus. The rear diffuser appears to have an extra couple of fins, and there's now a dual exhaust outlet instead of just a single one on the ST-Line. As we previously pointed out, this is a departure from the center-exit design of the current Focus ST. Changing the exhaust makes it possible to fit a trailer hitch. We doubt there was much demand for towing capability in the U.S., but Europeans more frequently tow with smaller cars, so perhaps there was a subset of ST buyers that wanted to hook up a small camper caravan to their sport compacts.
Though this Focus ST was spotted in the U.S., we're still not expecting the car to be available here. Ford was explicit in saying that the Mustang and Focus Active would be the only traditional cars offered in the U.S. The car was probably being tested in Colorado just to see how it handles high-altitudes. That's too bad, especially since it will probably make more power than the current model, either from a seriously upgraded turbocharged 1.5-liter three-cylinder, or more likely from a version of the Focus RS and Mustang EcoBoost's 2.3-liter turbo four-cylinder. We hope Ford reconsiders and brings it back to America.
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