This time, I ended up in a 2014 Focus 5 door. I had the option of a Cruze but, even despite Jesda's suggestion that it's the best small car for me, I decided I was more interested in driving the Focus and seeing if it lives up to what I've heard.
It looked kind of like this:
Overall, I liked it. I was not miserable in it, and even enjoyed some aspects. It is NOT perfect, with significant flaws. But I could imagine driving one every day and not wishing I was driving something else.
Styling
7/10
This is a pretty good-looking car, with nice lines, and clean details. The exceptions are the spade-shaped taillights, and the Darth Vader fascia. Newer/hotter models with the Aston grille are much classier looking. There wasn't an excess of chrome trying to convince me it's "upscale" and panel gaps were pretty consistent. It's certainly the best-looking Focus ever, but that's no real feat (previous Focus generations were outstandingly hideous). It's a genuinely good-looking little car. It definitely looks best as a hatchback (Ford has done some weird stuff with the bodylines in the deck and around the tail lights on the sedan).
Interior
4/10
The interior was pretty bad. Not only was it poorly laid-out, but the materials were very cheap in both look and feel. Space was not put to good use, and the few storage areas were so oddly shaped and located that they were essentially useless.
Driver ergonomics were okay. The seats were reasonably comfortable, though the headrests were far too aggressive and didn't adjust for enough height. The seatback adjust lever is also located at a strange angle that is awkward to operate while actually in the seat. Visibility was outstanding, both outward and in terms of instrumentation. Rear visibility and quarter visibility were great. I could see the gauges well through the steering wheel. However, as with just about every modern car on earth, the lowest wheel tilt position is higher than the highest I would ever be genuinely comfortable with. I am 6'4'' and all legs and usually have to worry about where my knees are going to go in small cars. In the Focus that was never a concern, but for the wrong reasons: the wheel was always six miles above my legs.
By far the Focus's greatest sin is the infotainment system and Sync. I had low expectations for a Microsoft product, but this defied even my monumental cynicism in terms of both in-car software and Microsoft software. It was so uncommunicative and opaque it was almost inconcievable--this from a guy who spends half his day behind a shell terminal. The graphical menus don't indicate progression (how did I get to this menu level, and where does it go next?). There's no "back" button half the time, and similar features are often divided between different categories, requiring ridiculous amounts of menu navigation. Also, while many features are handled by (buried in would be more accurate) tiered menus navigated by a D-pad, others are isolated solely to discrete dash buttons. And those buttons are so badly labelled that you only learn their actual use by pressing them and watching the result. I never successfully got bluetooth audio to connect to my phone, and connecting the phone via USB greeted me with a very Microsoftian DRM error and no luck.
Also ridiculously, Traction Control can only be disabled by diving 4 levels deep into the car's settings, and this must be done on every startup. There is NO dedicated TCS off button anywhere. Beyond unaccepable.
I didn't like the steering wheel controls, in form of stalk or button. The "d-pad" media and volume controls were mounted more on TOP of the spokes than on the faces, requiring thumb yoga for use. And the wacky multifaceted 3-way rocker switches for phone and cruise controls were excessively, cartoonishly huge and cheap looking. Meanwhile, the two-stalk setup combined with an on-dash headlight knob spreads everything way too thin. My Ford has one stalk and one headlight knob and that's it. Wipers, lights, signals, everything, all on those two controls. With the Focus it was an overcomplicated mess of knobs and buttons to accomplish simple stuff.
Here's a picture of this mess of a wheel and dash:
Look at that center stack!
And look at those lower wheel controls.
It's a cluster of "we have to fit this somewhere" design rather than any kind of planned structure.
Bonus: When was the last time you saw an actual "PRNDL" shifter?!
Powertrain
4/10
The engine alone is probably a 6. The transmission is a 2. Average that and you get 4.
Power was plentiful. I never felt like there was not enough power, and the car got out of its own way and accelerated better than average. It was certainly not overpowered, but it was robust enough to keep up with normal traffic. One odd attribute was the idle, which was incredibly chunky--moreso than any other 4 cylinder I can think of. It was uneven and inconsistent in an odd manner, too--with occasional random bouts of being almost comically harsh as though about to stall. The sound was tolerable (in terms of both NVH and exhaust tone). It wasn't excessively loud or overmuffled, which was nice.
The transmission is a paradox. Ford equips non-manual models with a 6 speed dual clutch automatic. However, it is tuned for economy and there is NO MEANS AT ALL of manually selecting gears, aside from a 1980s-style "L" position on the shifter. Who invests in a DCT and doesn't back it up with at least a manual mode on the shift lever? It's so odd. I think a manual mode would have been tremendously helpful as it would have helped with some of the around-town gear-hunting the computer induces.
The DCT has a very hard time managing starts and stops, low-speed crawl, and transitions from no or light throttle to normal or hard throttle. Shifts (which are frequent) at low speeds in traffic are very harsh and abrupt and impossible to ignore. Jerky starts are avoidable only with the carefullest manipulation of the transmission's behavior.
Under agressive acceleration, shifts are crisp and quick. Under normal driving, however, it's like driving with someone who is taking their first ever lesson at operating a clutch. I can certainly understand why this transmission has earned such strong dislike from just about everyone who has ever driven with it.
I averaged 32mpg, which is a pathetic 4 mpg higher than I average in my LS8 with twice the torque and displacement.
Handling
6/10
It was sufficiently capable. I was, however, astounded at the degree of bodyroll and sway the car demonstrated under even light steering inputs. It was significantly more pronounced than my LS8 on shocks with 100,000 miles under their belt. The ride was very supple, which I am sure is the tradeoff, and considering other small cars' ride quality I think I prefer Ford's approach here. But it's very odd to be driving a tiny FWD car, tuck into a corner, and feel the car rolling instead of eagerly dashing through. The car was competent enough, and I could push it pretty hard and still know what to expect, but that jello motion was always there making things feel slightly off.
This chassis is nowhere near as playful as I had been led to believe.
Features and Extras
2/10
Sync is unforgivable, even by Microsoft standards. The interface is bad, the display is underused (big text-on-grey readouts with no iconography or any real color), and the overall user experience is one of frustration and confusion, even for the most technologically-inclined.
TCS can only be disabled by spelunking menus.
Even when TCS is disabled, Stability control (yaw/sway/roll control) remains active. Snow-aided handbrake turns lead to computer-induced countersteer and ABS modulation--just not helpful. You can spin the fronts all day long but as soon as the back steps out the car panics. Feels backward in a FWD car. And regardless, it should be fully disableable. No excuse.
The audio system was abysmal. To hear the music in full, it had to be loud enough to drown out conversation. No amount of equalizer fiddling would fix this, so music remained a dull thrum from the rear of the car.
The manual-dimming rearview mirror was a source of frustration, too. It was so loose that attempting to flick the adjust lever for dimming moved the whole damn mirror. Manual dimming mirrors are something that just doesn't make sense to me anymore. The outside mirrors are power adjusted, but it's too expensive to install an electrochromic center mirror? It's 2014! My 1995 Q45 had auto-dimming for Hell's sake. We don't need a full Homelink suite, just a mirror that dims itself and (ideally) the driver side mirror as well.
I also learned that Ford's obsession with 1980s electronic beeps has not changed since 2005 when my LS was built. There's a beep for everything you don't possibly care about, and just for clarity the same beep for things you do care about. My favorite beep is the one that OVERRIDES THE TURN SIGNAL CLICK to let me know my passenger hasn't fastened their seatbelt--after we're already on the road and cruising. By the time Ford learns that Star Trek is just a TV show and beeps for everything are NOT in fact the future, Star Trek may just actually be real.
The car had a sunroof, which was nice and worth a point. The stupid oversimplified 2-button controls mean closing it from vent position requires far too much thought while trying to drive.
Overall
7/10
A genuinely likeable compact with some serious goal-setting and growing up to do. As I said before, I could happily drive one everyday without finding myself wishing I was driving a real car. In fact it feels a whole lot like a real car most of the time. It's not numb, but it's not particularly playful, either. It's a small, cheap, relatively economical car that doesn't feel like too much of a compromise, which is honestly not all that common. It's a small car you can take seriously.
