"In an interview with Car Magazine, the director of Ford's global performance division, Dave Pericak, indicated the function will be disengaged for the Australian market. Focus RS models will have the mode button located on the transmission tunnel near the gear lever.
"In Australia, for instance, they have hooligan laws on the road which means we will have to turn off Drift mode to stay legal," Pericak said. "It's a simple enough thing to do."
*sigh
I liked the headline of the article, not that piece of info about Australia though.
Maybe we can figure out a way later to regain that functionality for enthusiasts in Australia, perhaps through a software tweak or through importation of a specific U.S.-spec ECU or other part...
I dont think each market will have spec physical ECU's, the content may well differ, but I'm willing to bet its hidden not obliterated from the Australian code...
Can anyone explain what a "hooligan law" is? Never heard of that before. It doesn't strike me as surprising that a drift mode would be illegal in some places.
Too bad movies like what the fast and furious movie series has inspires people to go out and do crazy stuff, probably what sped up the implementation of these laws.
Oh we did crazy crap before those movies. There's more people out there now that just hate cars and the whole "enthusiast" scene. It's a nanny state sadly. Also a few bad apples (Commodore drivers) ruin it for the rest.
The irony is that drift mode would actually make the car "safer" to drive. If someone who probably shouldn't tries to take it to the edge. As @Creedence
Found another article that talks about the Focus RS's drift mode.
The culprit here is the Ford All-Wheel Drive with Dynamic Torque Vectoring system, a tail-happy setup that promises a lot. In the carmaker’s own words, we can look forward to “lateral acceleration exceeding 1 G” and, get this, “the ability to achieve controlled oversteer drifts at the track.”
The industry-first drift mode basically calibrates the performance-oriented AWD system to get torque distribution just right to help you kick the tail out “under circuit conditions.” Unlike cheap Haldex-equipped all-wheel drive systems, the GKN-developed AWD system of the 2016 Focus RS boasts with twin electronically controlled clutch packs on each side of the rear-drive unit.