Winner: Ford Focus ST
Second: Renault Megane RS 265 Cup
Third: Ford Fiesta ST
Winner: Ford Focus ST
The Sports Under $50,000 category again carries a star-studded line-up of affordable hot hatches, sedans and coupes. These are the cars that are attainable, and offer the best bang for your buck for those who want to enjoy motoring with a sporty edge.
With a few exceptions, the vehicles in this class start life as everyday sedans and hatchbacks, but they get to show their serious side here and take on a completely different persona. The competition in this field is fierce, so to climb to the top and take an outright win is an achievement not to be taken lightly.
Since its release, the Ford Focus ST has been a force to be reckoned with and it grabbed third place at Australia's Best Cars in 2013. It tends to take a blunter approach to the hot hatch genre with straight-out powerplant muscle - 184kW and 360Nm in fact, which is no laughing matter when putting this through a front-wheel-drive axle. Memories of first-edition Clubsport V8 Holden Commodores boasting 185kW come to mind … look how things have changed.
It's always been the ST's Achilles heel about how to deliver all that power to the ground and get around some of the steering behaviours that result from this. So Ford has worked very hard to address this with an upgrade in 2015 which saw significant work and improvements to front suspension, steering and driver input signals to complement the ST's stability control system. Overall, the handling characteristics have improved, and combined with an equal best-in-class score for performance, the ST has stepped up to the top position this year.
And the refresh does not stop there, with considerable interior improvements; gone is the busy Bermuda Triangle-style central button array. It's been replaced by a more intuitive and user-friendly layout including a new eight-inch touch-screen that now incorporates satellite navigation. Active xenon front headlights also complement the standard equipment list.