Owner Tigger    Posted in Ford Focus   Comments 0

Owned from new and now 1 year and 13,000 miles old.

Good points: Extremely spacious, very large and well shaped boot, huge doors with very easy access all round. Great visibility, no wind noise, great lights. Explosive performance (300bhp, 5 cylinder Volvo engine with phenominal torque). Plenty of tuning options. Good level of standard spec. Satisfaying and easy to drive, even when taking it easy. Good steering feedback and a very nice gearchange. Very powerful brakes and phenominal levels of grip. Torque steer is easily within acceptable limits. Nothing has broken, fallen off or otherwise let me down. Paintwork is very robust and does not damage easily. Good quality, standard fit, DAB sound system. Surprisingly cheap to insure through Ford's own scheme (£345), though being 46 with full NCD helps a lot.... Fuel consumption averaging around 31mpg, which is amazing for the performance on offer.

Bad points: Recaro seats do not adjust for height. Dash design very unimaginative and a bit tacky, plastics on lower dash, centre console and doors would not look out of place in a basic Transit van! The single worst bit is the (not even lockable) glovebox lid. Poor quality carpets are difficult to keep clean. No cruise control. Driving position is a little clumsy and compromised for a driver focused car. Rise is firm (though this is hardly surprising) and the car is surprisingly bulky on country lanes. Doors can be a bit too big in narrow parking spaces.

Overall, I'm very happy, but the car's budget underpinnings do keep reminding me that the basic Focus was never intended to compete at this price level. Best to think of it as £60,000 performance in a £15,000 car, then the price of £28,000ish seems like a good compromise!