With rumours of an impending Ford Fiesta RS still setting the Internet ablaze, the appearance of a mysterious test mule of the Fiesta is sure to get everyone overly excited about the prospect of an even hotter B-segment hatch. However, there are also sources that claim this car here is the next-gen Ford Fiesta.
While it may appear that the accompanying car in the photos you see here is a Ford Focus RS, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s acting as a form of benchmark for the Fiesta RS – instead, Ford could just be killing two birds with one stone by testing two cars in a single given period.
Seeing as how the current-generation Ford Fiesta has been on the market for quite some time now (with a facelift taking place in 2013), it would make chronological sense that the next-generation hatch is already under development for a possible late 2016/early 2017 world premiere.
While not much can be gleamed from the heavily-camouflaged mule, it would appear that the next-gen Fiesta could sport a redesigned front grille with larger gaps between the slats – as opposed to the current Fiesta’s one-piece frame with horizontally-mounted grille bars.
Elsewhere, the prototype sports widened front wheel arches which, again speculatively, would lead many to believe that this is the RS version as it would be required to fit larger wheels. At the back, the extroverted exhaust layouts that we’ve come to expect on hot Fords are nowhere to be seen.
Apart from the massive, tacked-on rear bumper further indicates that this is a mule used for testing the chassis of the next-gen Fiesta. Under the hood, expect a thoroughly reworked version of the 1.0 litre, turbocharged three-cylinder EcoBoost mill currently found in the outgoing Fiesta.
With that said, should this really be a mule for the Fiesta RS, expect similar aesthetic cues from its bigger brother, the Focus RS, to trickle down. Under the bonnet, a 1.6 litre, turbo’ed EcoBoost four-cylinder engine with over 220 hp and the all-wheel drive system from the Focus RS is expected to be included.
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i see duck face there