Cars

Renewed Focus on beating the Golf

The Ford Focus has been usurped as Northern Ireland's favourite family hatchback by the Volkswagen Golf. William Scholes finds out if a comprehensive facelift can help it reclaim its crown

Ford Focus
Ford Focus

IT might be ubiquitous but the Ford Focus has also always managed to be a rather good car.

Where the car it replaced, the Escort, was worse than customers deserved by the time it was eventually pensioned off, when the first Focus arrived in 1998 it was better than any mainstream do-it-all kind of car needed to be.

In particular, the Focus star shone brightest for those who value a sparkling driving experience.

Even if that didn't matter much to you, the rest of the car was a brilliantly judged package - everything a family hatchback needed to be, really.

No wonder the Focus went on to become a firm favourite everywhere, including in Northern Ireland.

But it's not only at Stormont where things have changed since 1998. Today, we prefer the Volkswagen Golf to the Focus and the Ford has never faced so much tough competition.

Ford was never likely to take all this lying down, so it's given us the car on this page - a newly facelifted and reworked Focus. Question is, is it good enough to help see off talented rivals including the Mazda 3 - Drive's favourite - as well as the Seat Leon, Peugeot 308 and Honda Civic?

The Focus isn't one of the more handsome hatchback contenders - these things are subjective, but to these eyes the Kia Ceed and Mazda 3 are far more stylish - and Ford has set out to give it a bit more visual impact.

The most obvious tweak is at the front, where the Focus has been treated to one of Ford's new Aston Martin-style grilles.

It certainly gives the Focus some much-needed presence but, as on the Fiesta and Mondeo, the overall effect is closer to the Vanden Plas version of the Austin Allegro than Ford would probably like.

That being said, the grille's more challenging aspects were mitigated on the test car by its fetching 'panther black' paintwork and a set of tasty 18-inch alloy wheels.

Pre-facelift, the Focus was badly feeling its age on the inside. Where competitors lavished their new cars with acres of soft-to-the-touch plastics, precision-tuned switches and knobs and state-of-the-art touchscreens and multimedia systems, the button-strewn Ford felt ancient and low-rent.

The facelift has gone a long way to addressing these problems, and while the ambience is still some way shy of the Golf, Mazda 3 or Peugeot 308, the Focus is no longer embarrassed in their company.

A new touchscreen is the stand-out change. It can be a little slow to respond and fiddly to operate but compared to the old effort, it's like going from a Nokia 3310 to an iPhone 6 overnight.

Ford makes much of its voice control system. It is one of the better examples of voice activation hardware but honestly, life is too short to spend your time pressing a button and talking into thin air only to get given the wrong radio station or phone number.

Elsewhere around the dashboard there has been a definite step up in quality but there are still too many cheap-feeling plastics.

The excellent driving position remains unchanged though the cabin feels notably less airy than some rivals; this is perhaps where the Focus's basic structure betrays its age.

Still, there's plenty of room up front for driver, passenger and accoutrements like mobile phones and bottles of water but the Focus is quite compromised in the back in terms of leg- and headroom - it's positively trumped by the likes of the Nissan Pulsar.

The test car also had heavily tinted back windows, leading my six-year-old co-tester to bewail the Focus as being a 'dark car' - not a positive recommendation when little people are likely to spend time on the back bench.

A small boot is another sign that the Focus's architecture dates back to 2010. Its 316 litres (1,215 litres with the seats folded) is a long way behind everything from the Nissan Pulsar (385/1,395 litres), Mazda 3 (364/1,263 litres) and Skoda Octavia (590/1,580 litres) to the Ceed (380/1,318 litres), Vauxhall Astra (370/1,235 litres) and Golf (380/1,270 litres).

Fine-tuning of the body structure and chassis has done nothing to harm the Focus's reputation as an enjoyable car to drive.

The pedals are consistently weighted, the steering a responsive, slack-free delight and the gearchange slick; the ride strikes an excellent compromise between comfort on the motorway and control on a B-road blast, and handling is predictable and backed up by plenty of grip.

It's fun in the way a Golf is mature, though it has to be said the Focus is no longer the stand-out driver's choice it once was - for me, the Mazda 3 handles with a little more verve, but the Ford is still an excellent choice.

Not counting the performance ST model, the revised Focus's main engine line-up is built around four engines, each with various power output and transmission options: 1.0-litre and 1.5-litre petrols, and 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre diesels.

The 1.5-litre units are new to the Focus, while the other engines are at least 15 per cent more efficient than before, says Ford.

The test car was equipped with the 123bhp version of the 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol. It's a remarkable little engine, smooth-revving and with an appealing thrum, and for the most part copes manfully with the task of hauling the Focus around.

It also scores very strong fuel consumption figures in the official EU tests but, as with some other downsized engines, this fails to translate into real world savings.

Indeed, I regularly take phone calls from owners of Ford models with this engine, disgruntled at how their car's disappointing fuel consumption.

These readers rarely fall into what might be called the boy racer category, and if you want to make swifter progress in your 1.0-litre Ford you will find yourself stirring the gear lever through the six ratios more than you might with a larger capacity engine.

Given the inherent sweetness of the Focus's controls, this is no hardship, but driven thus the fuel consumption takes an even greater beating; it all rather make you wonder about the wisdom of whether the engine downsizing trend is really worthwhile.

Back to question I posed earlier - is the Focus's latest facelift enough to put it decisively back to the top of the class?

Probably not, in all honesty. Practically every rival has a bigger boot and more space for back seat passengers - the importance of which cannot be underestimated in a family hatchback - and cars like the Volkswagen Golf better convey a sense of high quality and solidity. Nor is the Focus out on its own any longer as a driver's car; it's still excellent but the Mazda 3 in particular also offers a zesty steer.

Still, Ford has targeted improvements in the right areas, with the dashboard touchscreen deserving to be singled out for being a huge step forward.

Where the Focus has traditionally trumped rivals is with a range of near-impossible variety; that is still the case, so while the Focus may not be outstanding, it is remarkable for the way it does so many things so well.

The facelift is unlikely to help the Focus leapfrog the Golf in the Northern Ireland sales charts, but it should help keep the rest of the pack behind, even if for only a little longer. I'd still take a Mazda 3, though.