i get the impression with ford that they make the cars with this amount of power possibly to get the insurance costs down a little. i can't remember what a standard cos puts out, but look at the tuning potential that you have on that. tuning companies will already be working on odds and sods to make the st focus that bit faster.

and another thought, think how well the frs was recieved (after making us wait long enough) and how much tuning has been acheived in a relatively short space of time? pehaps ford knows that us ford owners like to tinker with things, so start with a pretty low sounding spec that allows us ford nuts to fettle with it??