Derrick Kuzak
Vice-President of Product Development, Ford of Europe

Ford's sports car strategy is slowly being revealed, with the new Fiesta ST and RS shown at the Geneva Motor Show. They are part of a wider plan that will be rolled out over the next few years.

We are not in the business of creating halo products just for the sake of it - Ford builds cars to make money. Look at the current Focus: it is an excellent car and has made money for us because it's sold so strongly. We want to repeat that with all of our models.

Performance variants are a very good way for us to raise the profile of Ford products. The reason we picked the Fiesta was to attract younger customers to the brand - the idea is to build loyalty at a young age, and young people buy Fiestas. It was an obvious choice, really.

The ST brand will remain accessible, while the RS cars will be more exclusive. We will only build a limited series of RS models, as we have done with the Focus RS. We built just 4500 examples of that, and it has proved a big success for us. It keeps the cars exclusive and protects residual values, so it helps both us and owners.

Obviously, there are already very competitive products out there - rival cars such as the Renault Clio 182 and the new Mini. We are aiming for better or class-rivalling performance figures, and we are confident that our new models will deliver that. Like the Focus RS, these cars won't be about outright speed, however: the ride and handling of both our fast Fiestas will be much better than that of rivals.

We have a growing ST line-up and we are establishing RS with Focus and Fiesta models. We now need to establish a motor sport strategy; the Fiesta Junior World Rally Car shown at Geneva is a step in that direction.

Ford is considering new ways of promoting these exciting new cars, to make their owners feel part of a community. Possibilities include owner track days, more clubs and more race programmes with signifficant visibility. We are looking at a variety of options - watch this space.

We are aware of the problems with the delayed launch of the Focus RS and they will not be repeated next time. But when the Focus RS did arrive, we had no qualmns that the car was fully developed. We want all our cars to be reliable - and we had trouble achieving this with the Focus RS at first, causing the delays.

Will there be an RS version of the next-generation Focus? I cannot say at this stage, but there is obviously a presedence with the current model and Ford will not leave a segment.

Could we use the Cosworth brand? Again, nothing is decided, but Cosworth is part of the Ford family and it has excellent engine know-how. We will use that capability to the fullest. There could be something in the next year or two.