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| 2005 Ford Focus Review | |||
| Whether you're about to spend $40K on a brand new car, or half that on a used car, it is always important to learn as much as you can about the used car. Read these car reviews to learn about all aspects of the vehicle. Each of the usedcar reviews cover interior and exterior features, options, road tests, and more. | |||
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Introduction
| Road Test
| Inside & Out
| Other Thoughts
| Last Word
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| Inside & Out | |||
Say goodbye to "New Edge," the Ford styling phase that lasted, what, six years? The 2005 restyle is pure convention. Even the decklid "Focus" badge is now in capslock.The interior lost its original artfulness, but aside from the new corporate radio, most controls remain the same. New features include overhead console storage, a neat CD holder, and door-mounted cupholders. Further clues that the Focus came from abroad are the door locks, window switches, and air conditioner. They were designed the foreign way - the right way - i.e. the A/C system has standard temperature, mode, and fan speed knobs, and it leaks air naturally at speed. Love it. Ford's radio looks the same yet sounds different every time. In the Focus, that luckily translates to powerful and boomy, and ours didn't even have the 500-watt Sony upgrade. It gets a bit lost in all the high-speed racket, but it's still pretty good for a base system, and easily better than the ones Ford puts in its other sedans. The remote radio controls look weird but work fine. The appeal of the Focus fades a bit with some seat time. Reviewers have often complained - loudly - about the seats, usually citing intolerable back pain. I hate them just as much, for different reasons. There's no angle adjuster for more thigh support, and coupled with a way-too-lightly-sprung gas pedal, I found myself having to lift off, press on, lift off, press on. Gets old fast, but aside from performing the same tedium with the cruise control, it's the only way to avoid a state of constant acceleration. Also, those past the six foot mark might run out of legroom. Flaws that are this incessantly annoying makes it hard to appreciate things like the telescopic steering wheel or a seat that I personally found comfortable otherwise. Other Focus flaws are more glaring, literally: daytime driving can produce reflections in the speedometer casing that render it nearly invisible. You see reflections of the grainy dash in the windshield, too. And Ford is certainly doing nothing to dissuade the association of "small car" with "cheap," judging by the look of some plastics or the clunky sound of the door locks. Ford put heated leather seats in our Focus, which is a little like pouring Grey Poupon on a Big Mac. It ain't great leather, either. Despite the questionable driver treatment, you have to give credit for the amount of space they dug up in here. Our four-door hatchback is competition-free, so let's look at other Focus models: the sedan's got 108.9 cubic feet of interior room, which is within spitting distance of "mid-size" for a 175.2-inch long, 66.7-inch wide, 56.8-inch tall car. Both hatchbacks, the shortest cars in the lineup, are the same length and hold 18 cubic feet with the seats up, 40.2 with them down. (The lack of a hatch handle is an omission, though.) The super-practical wagon can even carry 73.7 cubic feet of crap with all the seats folded, and don't think seat comfort was compromised in any of these. Despite an intrusive cupholder in the middle of the floor, the back seat is one of the better benches, and headroom is great in all positions. And just when you thought Honda was the king of efficiency... But just when you get all excited about packaging accomplishments, cheapness creeps in again: that roomy back seat has no head restraints. 1 five-passenger Focus + 1 rear-end collision = 3 snapped necks. That's not the kind of math I like. And while side air bags are optional on all models, you don't get curtains with them. Alarming side-impact crash scores from two federal agencies urge purchase of the side bags. The Focus seems to be doing well in most other crash tests, at least. |
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