FROM NOSE TO TAIL; ATI's Focus strikes like a Cobra: fast and hard.(News)

Byline: ANDREW LUU

Despite a shared love affair with "more power,'' there has always been some animosity between muscle car enthusiasts and the sport compact tuner crowd. Even though many pocket rockets thrashed V8s on the road and at the track, their tuners would inevitably hear the argument: "There's no replacement for displacement.''

So here's a replacement with displacement.

Accurate Technologies Inc., based in Wixom, Michigan, took delivery of a Focus SVT and started asking the "more power'' question. A stock SVT is an entertaining package with a high-compression 2.0-liter inline four with 170 hp and 145 lb-ft of torque. That's great for the class but sedate even when compared to the base V8-powered, 260-hp and 302-lb-ft Mustang GT. ATI sales manager Richard George said exceeding those figures would stretch the four-banger's limit. The company built one Focus with a supercharger, but ATI also wanted something that would be more special.

Accurate Technologies does a lot of Ford work, so the natural thing to do was swap in Ford's most powerful engine: the SVT Mustang Cobra's 390-hp, 390- lb-ft, supercharged 4.6-liter V8.

Problem solved-and then some. The result is called the Terminator Focus.

With custom stainless-steel headers, a larger single-blade throttle body and a smaller pulley on the supercharger (to increase boost pressure), George says this V8 now boasts upward of 500 hp and 500 lb-ft. Coupled with a curb weight of about 3200 pounds, it doesn't take an engineer to put two and two together and figure out what that does for Focus performance.