The Ford Focus RS On The Left Costs $25k/£19k More. Is It Worth It?

There’s nothing wrong with your eyes – or the title right above. What we have here are two examples of the Mk1 iteration of the Ford Focus RS for sale at the same dealer. But one is priced at £26,995 ($36,000), while the other carries a £45,995 ($65,000) sticker.

If we were talking classic muscle cars you might assume the difference was down to one of them being optioned with a special, high performance motor, or being one of only a handful fitted with a trick interior.

However, when Ford built the first Focus RS in the early 2000s, it expected you to take it or leave it. Unlike the Mk2 RS that followed and was available in various colors, the 4,501 Mk1s produced were all painted in Imperial Blue, they all featured the same striped Sparco seats, 18-inch OZ wheels, and they all got a 212 hp (215 PS) 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine with a five-speed (yeah, just five) manual transmission. Options? There weren’t any.

Zero to 62 mph (100 km/h) took 6.4 seconds, the RS Mk1 would hit 144 mph (232 km/h) given enough space, and the aggressive limited slip differential banished understeer, but made fast driving a real workout. The car on the right in our opening picture can’t have had too many workouts though. It has covered just 12,000 miles in 18 years, helping account for its massively higher price. It’s also in stunning condition.

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But the second car’s 54,000 miles hardly makes it an old dog, and the dealer, modern classic specialist Four Star Classics in the UK, also describes it as being “a great example”, while also mentioning a few minor stone chips and a tiny bit of wear to the driver’s seat that make it clear it’s not quite as well preserved as the pricier car.

As is often the case with these cars, both have had a few subtle mods, but nothing serious, and nothing that can’t be reversed. But interestingly, darker wheels aside, it’s the more affordable car that looks the more original from the outside. It’s still sporting the stock headlights, while the expensive car has the mean-looking (and far more effective) xenons that were optional in the contemporary Focus ST170.

So which would you pick? The 12,000-mile car probably makes a better investment, but only if you don’t add too many extra miles. And great as a restored car can be, there’s something cool about cars that have hardly been used. Every surface and control looks and feels just like it did when the original owner picked the car up from the Ford dealer back in 2003.

But I’m willing to bet you’d have at least 95 per cent as much fun in the less expensive car when you rolled it out of the garage on a Saturday. And you’d have $25k/£19k to buy a second modern classic hero for Sunday, if you so wished.

Which would you buy, and would you even be able to spot the price differences from the pictures in our gallery without the help of the odometer shot? Leave a comment and let us know.