It is not widely known that Tickford won the engineering contract for the research, development and indeed to oversee production of the Mk 1 Focus RS. Tickford made substantial modifications to the base unit, with up to 70% of the base components either uprated, re-engineered, or completely redesigned. They also engineered the turbo installation which was all done at their Milton Keynes base.

Tickford did not change the body or interior layout arrangements pre-set by Ford. Production for this project was set up in Germany in close proximity to build of the base model Focus. Tickford also had the full responsibility of working closely with specialist Ford engineering and manufacturing teams to create the desired results. It was a difficult program, due to extremely tight budgets, combined with numerous engineering challenges.

Small batch, low volume parts supply for this car was a new challenge for Tickford being relatively unknown in Germany, so Ford had on occasion to step in to ensure suppliers co-operated.  18 Pre-production prototypes were made in black or white with one in Silver. The car was a great success for Ford with a swift sell-out of all 5501 units.