The Ford Focus is one of the mainstays of the British car market, and it’s easy to see why. The well-judged chassis delivers a composed, comfortable and enjoyable drive, with excellent body control and responsive steering. The engines - particularly the 1.0-litre EcoBoost in 125PS (123bhp) guise – are punchy enough, but refined with it. And the latest Mk4 Focus has better cabin space than its predecessors, plus quality that’s pretty much a match for the best in class. Keen pricing and finance offers seal the deal.
Ford has played things a bit safe on the Focus’s styling; it’s clearly an evolution of the old car’s but it also incorporates some styling cues that we know from its little brother, the Fiesta - especially around the front end.
The view along the sides is dominated by the longer wheelbase - the gap between the front and rear axles - which is the longest it’s ever been on a Focus.
Inside, the Focus’s dashboard is simple and relatively uncluttered by switches - although it’s good to see that the heating and ventilation controls are still present as physical dials and buttons, instead of being hidden in the depths of some menu on the infotainment system.
Speaking of infotainment, the Focus has a couple of display sizes - 6.5 inches or eight inches - and the screen is mounted in a prominent position, right at the top of the centre of the facia. Its ‘floating tablet’ style may not be to everyone’s taste but the location means that you don’t have to divert your eyes too far from the road ahead to see key information or switch channels on the radio.
The interior quality is good enough to rival the best in class - without delivering a knockout blow on the VW Golf, perhaps. There are soft-touch padded materials up high, mixed with metallic finishes depending on which trim level you go for, and while there are harder plastics (notably on the centre console between the front seats), they’re generally in areas that you’re not likely to touch all that often anyway. It’s good to see padded door liners and flock-lined storage areas, too; they give the cabin a bit more of an air of luxury and help to cut down vibrations and rattles.
Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment
Go for a Style edition of the Focus and there’s not much to discuss on the infotainment front; you get a DAB radio with a small screen, and that’s your lot.
Fortunately, every other edition of the car comes with Ford’s SYNC 3 system, which is snappy, quick to respond to inputs and blessed with a reasonably simple interface with big buttons that are easy to stab with a finger when you’re on the move.
Crucially, the system also features Android Auto and Apple CarPlay - so even if your spec of Focus doesn’t have navigation, you can hook up your phone’s system via the USB port at the bottom of the centre console and get better live traffic updates than Ford’s offering anyway, plus your own music streaming services.
The first thing to know is that the Focus gets a couple of different suspension configurations, depending on which engine you choose. Opt for the 1.0-litre EcoBoost petrol or the 1.5-litre EcoBlue diesel and you’ll get relatively simple twist-beam rear suspension. Go for the 1.5-litre petrol or the 2.0 diesel and your car will feature a multi-link set-up. Picking ST-Line or ST-Line X lowers the set-up by 10mm, incidentally, regardless of what the layout is at the back.
This sounds like one half of the range could be the poor relation, but it’s worth remembering that some of the Focus’s main rivals (notably the Golf) have a similar split in the technical line-up.
It shouldn’t bother you much anyway because, regardless of suspension layout, the Focus is the best-handling family car among its peers. Start your journey in town, as so many of us do, and you’ll find the car quick to respond when you turn the wheel to cut through traffic. But this doesn’t mean it’s nervous at speed; there’s just about enough play off-centre for the car to remain composed on motorways. It’s comfortable, too, the primary and secondary rides working nicely to soften all but the very sharpest of jolts from the road below.
And then you find a twistier bit of road, and the Focus trots out its party piece. Don’t expect the steering to chat away to you all the time, but the electrically powered set-up goes down as one of the best we’ve experienced in a family hatch. Suffice it to say that you will very quickly learn to lean on the Focus’s front end.
Of course, none of this front-end bite would matter if the rest of the package felt like it wasn’t playing its part in proceedings. There’s the faintest, fleeting feeling of weight transfer if you ask the Focus to change direction in a hurry, but it passes so quickly that it’s unlikely to ever be an issue. As a handling package, it’s extremely well-judged.
Step up to a 1.5-litre ST Line on the more expensive suspension and there isn’t a giant leap forward in terms of agility; that’s testament to the regular set-up, more than it is any explicit criticism of the multi-link arrangement. You do feel the extra complexity when you start trying to change direction quickly over poorer surfaces; the faster Focus remains just that little bit more composed than its less powerful stablemate. But if you think the 1.0 is going to be fast enough for you (and it should be fast enough for plenty), you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about settling for the simpler chassis set-up.
We’ve also tried the most modest of the Focus diesels - the 120PS EcoBlue 1.5 - and it’s a decent option if you know you’re going to rack up big mileages. It’s not quite as sweet and hushed as the EcoBoost when cruising along, but there’s bags of torque in the low revs, allowing you to really exploit the car’s ability to hang on in corners and keep up swift progress.
The standard six-speed manual gearbox is slick enough, although it does prefer a positive throw instead of tentative shifts. The eight-speed automatic, meanwhile, is not without the occasional glitch but in general it’s a smooth enough performer. We still think that the VW Group’s dual-clutch DSG units are ever so slightly more polished, though.
Some Focus trim levels can be chosen with continuously variable dampers, although we haven’t had the opportunity to try the technology just yet.
Engines
The Focus has a mix of petrol and diesel engines. The core of the petrol range, badged EcoBoost, is a 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine that’s offered in three states of tune. There’s a 84bhp version, then 99bhp and 123bhp editions that are likely to be more comfortable with life in a car of the Focus’s size.
The 123bhp 1.0 is not earth-shatteringly rapid, but keep it spinning somewhere just north of about 2,250rpm and it’ll reward you with quick enough progress for most requirements. It’s at its best pootling around town or cruising along on the motorway, where it fades nicely into the background.
There is also a three-cylinder 1.5-litre engine, offered with either 148bhp or 180bhp - and the more powerful of those two motors actually has enough shove to take the Focus halfway towards being a warm hatchback instead of a regular family car.
The diesel options are a 1.5-litre unit, called EcoBlue and offered with either 94bhp or 118bhp, and a 2.0 with a punchy 148bhp. The Focus doesn’t have any ‘hot’ diesel options like some of its VW Group rivals, incidentally.
Ford has plans to launch a mild-hybrid Focus - using 48-volt technology instead of plug-in compatibility - but we’re unlikely to see it before 2020.
The Focus is built on an all-new C2 platform, although we’re led to believe it shares knowledge and some technology with the underpinnings that have proven such a hit under the Fiesta in recent years. Even so, the new architecture does bring some risks on reliability - but at least the majority of the engines in the line-up are reasonably well-proven EcoBoost petrols. The EcoBlue diesels are fresh, though, so the jury’s out on their dependability.
Although the Mk4 Focus is all new, it’s worth noting that its immediate predecessor did finish in the top half of our Driver Power ‘Best Cars to Own’ poll.
Ford didn’t exactly cover itself in glory in our most recent Driver Power Car Manufacturer poll, though; its 16th position put it firmly in the lower half of the table, and it was behind some of the brands who build the Focus’s key rivals - VW, SEAT and Kia.
The new Focus hasn’t been tested by EuroNCAP’s crash-test team, but Ford is piling on the kit in the bid for a maximum five-star rating. You’ll be able to order Co-Pilot360, which brings adaptive cruise control with stop & go, traffic sign recognition and lane centring. Other kit on offer includes evasive steering assist, blind spot monitoring with cross traffic alert, inflatable seatbelts and pre-collision assist with pedestrian and cyclist detection.
Warranty
The Focus comes with Ford’s standard warranty, which is over an industry standard of three years but does stretch to 60,000 miles during that period, which is on the generous side. Ford also offers the chance to extend cover to four years/80,000 miles and five years/100,000 miles.
Servicing
Ford hasn’t announced full details on servicing prices and plans for the Focus, but we’d expect the model to slot into the line-up somewhere between the Fiesta and Mondeo. That should mean a price of around £550 for three years of cover, including two services.
One of the Mk3 Focus’s biggest problems was a shortage of interior space, so Ford went back to the drawing board for the Mk4 Focus and extended the wheelbase (the gap between the front and rear axles) by more than five centimetres.
All of that extension has been handed over to the cabin occupants - particularly those in the rear seats. And the result is accommodation that is perfectly comfortable for four six-footers, even on a long journey. There’s even room for a third occupant in the middle of the rear seats - and with no big transmission tunnel in the floor, they should have somewhere to put their feet, too.
Up front there’s good shoulder and headroom, and small touches there have improved the overall feeling of space; there’s a switch-operated electric parking brake across the range now, instead of a bulky handbrake lever.
The boot isn’t the largest in the class but it’s more than respectable - and only a few litres off the capacity of a VW Golf when the rear seats are in place. Lower them and the Focus actually trumps some of its main rivals on out-and-out load-lugging space.
Size
The Ford Focus is 4,378mm long, 1,979mm wide (including mirrors), and 1,471mm tall. Those figures make it a full 12cm longer than a VW Golf, although the Ford is only a few millimetres longer than another of its main rivals, the Vauxhall Astra.
It’s wider than both of those competitors, too, and you may want to take advantage of Ford’s optional door protectors. They extend around the edge of the door as you open it, protecting the metal from scrapes against walls and plaster.
Leg room, head room & passenger space
The Mk4 Focus is definitely the most practical version of the car to date; there’s room in the cabin for four six-footers to travel a long distance in comfort, and a fifth person could squeeze into the middle seat in the rear for a shorter trip. There are ISOfix points for child seats in both of the outer rear seats.
Boot
The Focus is now one of the longest cars in the class, but Ford has clearly used that extra length to prioritise cabin space over boot capacity, because while the load bay of the car is up there with those of its rivals, it’s not exactly cavernous.
At 375 litres with the rear seats in place, the Focus gives away five litres to the capacity of the Golf. But fold the back row down and the positions are reversed; the Ford’s 1,354 comfortably exceeds the VW’s 1,270 litres. But of course, neither of these cars can get anywhere near the load-lugging ability of the Skoda Octavia, the undisputed family-car king of boot capacity.
There are a few side hooks in the Focus’s boot but it’s a little disappointing that Ford hasn’t seen fit to offer some more tricks in the boot floor itself - such as sticky ‘dividers’ that could stop your shopping from rolling around.
Ford’s EcoBoost engine has won plenty of awards for its combination of performance, refinement and practicality - and it doesn’t let the side down on the Focus.
CO2 emissions fluctuate a little depending on which trim level you go for (varying wheel sizes are to blame) but the most powerful of the 1.0 EcoBoosts dips below 110g/km on a quite a few versions. That’s considerably cleaner than the comparable Golf (1.4 125PS).
You’ll pay a penalty for the automatic transmission in the Ford, though - in contrast to the Golf, in which the DSG dual-clutch is often cleaner than the manual. You should factor in around 10-15g/km of extra CO2 emissions in petrol models - but this deficit is reduced to zero on some of the diesels.
Insurance groups
Ford has yet to confirm comprehensive insurance groups for the Focus - but given the amount of safety kit on board, as standard and available on the options list, we’d expect the numbers to be at least on a par with the likes of the Vauxhall Astra and VW Golf.
Depreciation
It’s too early to say if the Mk4 Focus will hold its value any better than, say, the Vauxhall Astra - but we’d already wager that the ever-steady Golf will still hand a few percent more of its purchase price back to you after three years of motoring.
The key will be discounting - and whether Ford’s dealers can resist the temptation to push up the volumes at the end of every sales period. The fact that the car is all new may give them renewed confidence to hold fire on the biggest deals - for now, at least.
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