It's just another tyre shredder. (Ford Focus 1.8 Zetec TDdi 5dr)

Member Name: buzzard_cad

Product:	Ford Focus 1.8 Zetec TDdi 5dr
Date:	04/05/05 (8936 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb handling, Good economy

Disadvantages: A hard ride, A tiny boot, Stalls easily when cold

Summary
The TDdi Focus is an average car with faults in areas, but this car can be fun to drive if you have time, space and patience. The Focus has a good fuel economy along with excellent handling characteristics, but you trade this for a hard ride, and a tiny boot space.

This is not really a family car as in my opinion there is little legroom in the back for teenagers and for smaller children a pushchair would use all the available boot space. This is a company representative’s car, for hard use on the motorways and twisty main roads.

Looks
The Focus body is average, I’ve looked at the car from many different angles and it doesn’t look great from any of them. The front lights are splayed and cross-eyed, the indicators are located somewhere in this mass of glazing, but I can’t see them until they are lit and when they are they seem small and dim. The sides bulge out of the wheel arches and the rear lights seem out of place. The locations high up in the rear roof pillars make the lower back end look fat and oversized. Finally the cambered roof may aid aerodynamics, but it does nothing for looks or the interior.

Interior
The first thing I notice inside the Focus is that the whole dashboard is a long way from my seating position. The central location of the entertainment system and air control is too far away, as I have to lean forward and down to adjust the heating. The instrument stalks on the steering column are well placed including the entertainment controls, but the head light controls are on the dash to the right and I don’t like the positioning, I preferred the old twisting selector on the stalk.

The one thing I do like is the steering wheel adjustment, it has telescopic and vertical movement this is good, as I prefer the steering wheel closer to me so I can lean back in the seat. The front seats are comfortable and not too soft, the adjustment levers under the seat are easily reachable and moveable. The adjustments available underneath the seat are horizontal and a vertical tilt for the base portion of the seat. The usual adjustment of a twist knob on the left side for the back is there, but there are no lumber support adjustments, which is a little disappointing, but is not a major problem unless you have a bad back.

The rear seats have little legroom and as the roof dips down towards the rear of the car the headroom is reduced, even an averaged sized adult would find siting here is cramped. The rear headrests are I think unnecessary as they restrict the view out of the back window, also they are awkward to remove if you ever what to drop the rear seats down.

Driving
The superb handling characteristics of the Focus are a real joy to behold. It eats up the corners with ease and consequently is a nice car to drive on twisty country lanes. The only thing with the stiffened suspension is that the ride of the car is a little bit on the uncomfortable side. You get to feel all the bumps of the road and hitting a pothole gives a hell of a jolt. Even on the motorway you get to feel all the vibrations coming up through the steering wheel and the pedals. I have found that driving about 5 to 10mph slower on a road improves the ride quality greatly, although you may take much longer to get to you destination you feel less hassled.

The engine noise is very quite for a diesel and I think that is good. The engine revs slowly up to 2000rpm when the turbo kicks in, the boost up to 3500 rpm is good, but then the power falls of rapidly. The engine is good for pulling power up to the speed you want, but it is not a fast boy racer car and big petrol engines will easily out drag it, in a race from the lights.

For me the good drive is hampered by a very unforgiving cold engine in the winter, which makes driving away for the first ten minutes a real pain. I struggled with this problem through this winter thinking it was a bad clutch lever, but in conversations with a work colleague who has the next registration number up from my car and he too had a similar cold start problem this winter.

Aside from my problems with the cold engine I find the gearshift to be very knotty and stiff. I have many problems getting the Focus into first gear when I am at a junction and as such I tend to sit at a junction with my foot on the clutch.

The Focus is much better on the open roads than on the city streets and this is where you’ll see lots of them, thundering up and down the motorway in hordes. The whole car is well balanced and on the motorway will sit in a straight line with little input from the driver. Then when the curves start to appear it will slink round them with minimum amount of fuss. If only the ride was a little smoother I could relax a little bit, when driving this car long distances.

The only downside to the fantastic handling is that if you drive it hard into corners you will munch up the front tyres in no time. I have eaten up a set of front tyres in six months worth of driving and done only around 12,000 miles and this is from a car that had only 15,000 miles on the clock, when I got my mucky paws on it!

Storage
Due to the back and sides of the Focus sloping inwards, the boot reciprocates this and leaves no space for any luggage. The boot of the Focus is tiny, there is no room for a weekly shopping, with some of it ending up on the back seats. Other items that end up on the backseat when the boot is empty are the golf bag and clubs, large boxes and suitcases.

I’ll give an example of what I would like to get in the boot on one journey. I had a job away from home for one week and had to travel one hundred miles with three items, a bag of clothes, a box of work tools and laptop computer. Previously all these items fitted into a boot of my old car with space for other items. This time I managed to get the box and the bag in the boot, the laptop ended up on the back seat. On the way back I was asked to take some tools back and these also ended up on the backseat.

The interior of the car has little storage for other items, it has three cup holders in the central area, two in front of the gear shift and one behind the handbrake for the rear passengers. There are pocket holders at the back of the front seats, but I dislike these as you can only put flat wide items like magazines in them. The front passenger side has a glove box, but much like the boot it is small and a standard sized hardback road atlas will not fit in here. I had to buy a smaller ring bound A5 road atlas especially for the Focus to fit in its tiny glove box.


Conclusions

Here come the confessions, firstly I don't really rate Fords, I've driven more Ford cars and vans than I can remember and I've only ever really liked one. A 1994 diesel Transit pickup, so the diesel engine Focus should be on the more favoured portion of the list, in reality its in the middle good, but not that great.

Secondly I am writing this report on a Focus (‘04) that isn't mine. Its a company car and I'm grateful to my company for getting my this car, but I wish I had a little choice in the matter. I have had the car for over six months now and I still feel the same as I did when I original wrote this opinion on Ciao.

I was under the impression that this car was the benchmark of the automotive industry in the late 1990’s. By looking around at the other cars like the new VW Golf that are near as damn it clones of the Focus I can see that is true. In general I like this diesel Focus, but sometimes it frustrates me, there are some things that take a little time to get used to on this car and after over six months of driving it I’m still struggling with the gearbox, the clutch and the lack of storage.

The handling on the Focus is superior to anything else I’ve ever driven and Ford know this. This is the ace in the Focus pack that is trumpeted by the company and every motoring journalist around. What they don’t tell you is that there are no more aces and too many jokers remaining in the pack. The small boot, a knotty gearbox, an unforgiving cold engine, little rear legroom and a very hard ride are the items that pull the Focus down.

I think my advice for anyone interested in buying a Focus is think about what you need for you next car. If you want a car that has very good handling then this is the one for you. If you need a small family car with room for children and all their items then I’ll suggest you look elsewhere.
At the end of the day I don’t love the Focus, I merely respect it and that is a shame for all the work that the Ford designers have put into this car. At the end of the day, it’s just another tyre shredder.

Thanks for reading

Martin

*Originally posted by me at Ciao.co.uk under the same username. Revised, updated and posted at Dooyoo.co.uk by me.

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