Last month, we told you a little about Ford’s first Overboosted EcoBoost engine, designed to make the 2013 Ford Focus ST mean and green.

At that time, the $24,495 sports hatch hadn’t received its official EPA ratings, but yesterday Ford was able to announce them to the automotive world.

As Ford predicted, the Focus ST is its greenest performance Focus yet, with 23 mpg city, 32 mpg highway and 26 mpg combined.

Read our 2013 Ford Focus ST First Drive Report

That might not sound like the gas mileage figures you’d normally associate with a green car, but examine the other specifications of the 2013 Ford Focus ST, and those figures seem a little more impressive. 

First, the 2.0-liter, direct-injection, four-cylinder, turbocharged, intercooled Ecoboost engine found in the 2013 Focus ST is capable of producing 252 horsepower and an impressive 270 foot-pounds of torque. 

For reference, the cross-shopping 2012 Volkswagen GTi is fitted with a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine capable of an almost identical gas-mileage to the 2013 Focus ST. But it produces 50 horsepower and 63 foot-pounds of torque less than the Focus ST.

In other words, for the amount of power and torque the 2013 Focus ST produces, its gas mileage is exceptional. 

Second, the 2013 Ford Focus ST isn’t powered by an engine designed exclusively as a performance engine. It uses a tweaked version of Ford’s 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine, an engine designed specifically for its high gas mileage. 

In the larger 2013 Ford Edge, the same engine only manages 21 mpg city, 30 mpg highway and 24 mpg combined.

Is the 2013 Ford Focus ST a green car? 

No, but it is certainly a greener car, thanks to green energy technology. 

And for that, it deserves some attention.

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