By Frank S. Washington
DETROIT, MI -– By most accounts, the 2012 Ford Focus moves the automaker’s also ran compact to a contender for the title of best car in the segment.
The new Focus is capable and smartly styled. There are two versions: a four door sedan and the five-door hatchback. To be candid, I like the sedan better but that’s just my personal choice.
More importantly, both versions of the Focus have the same running gear, thus they have the same road manners.
My five door hatchback featured a 2.0 liter four-cylinder direct fuel injection engine that made 160 horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque. The front-wheel-drive Focus was mated to s six speed automatic transmission (a five speed manual is also available).
I found this combination appealing. With a curb weight of 2,948 lbs., that engine provided just enough oomph to make the Focus assertive on the surface streets and expressways here. The six-speed automatic was smooth, silent and decisive.
My Focus was quiet and that was mildly impressive. Many of the surface streets here are, as in other big cities, not in pristine condition. The Focus had an independent strut front suspension and a multi link setup in the rear and their tuning flattened many of the ruddy streets.
Before I forget, the 2012 Ford Focus had an EPA rating of 27/37 in city and highway driving. That’s great but like many compact cars the fuel tank was lacking. It had a 12.4 gallon capacity. If it held more gas there would be fewer stops at the gas station; that’s a good thing.
But that’s merely a quibble and one of two that I had. The six speed automatic transmission can be put into sport mode and shifted manually. I found pushing a button on the side of the shift knob to get into manual mode awkward.
Still, handling was precise and though I wasn’t aggressively pushing my Focus I didn’t experience any torque steer or wheel skip. But I did experience an awfully practical car that did well as a daily driver.
First, the backseats of the Ford Focus hatchback were comfortable. There was plenty of head and legroom. And though the marketing material said the Focus is a five passenger vehicle, I think it could carry four full size adults in comfort. That’s saying something for a compact car.
The thing about hatchbacks is the cargo space they provide and that was the case with the 2012 Ford Focus. With the second row seats up my hatchback had a very healthy 23.8 cubic feet of cargo space. That expanded to 44.8 cu. ft. with the second row seats folded.
From the front set of seats, the Focus hatchback was no different as I remember from the sedan. What impressed me most was what I call the butterfly layout of the center stack.
The climate vents were on the outside and they had that vertical upward angle of butterfly wings. The audio controls were in the center and they had the elongated rounded shape of a butterfly’s body. CD, audio, auxiliary, phone and menu controls were slanted upward on the left while the telephone key pad was slanted upward on the right and they completed the butterfly wing look. It was all very compact.
My test vehicle did not have a navigation system so there was no touch screen, just a smaller information screen above the center stack. There was another information screen between the speedometer and the odometer in front of the driver. For a vehicle that didn’t have a lot of options, make that none, there were two information screens, another sign that Ford is in the forefront of high tech interiors.
My only other quibble was the black cloth seats. I’m sure the material was durable but aside from the seating surfaces, the cloth looked like, eh, thin cloth. Anything in a vehicle that does not look substantive is not good. But that’s just me.
I had the Focus 5-door hatchback SEL. The only option was its $495.00, 17-inch alloy polished wheels (they did look good). The base price of my test vehicle was $21,065. Add a $725 freight charge and the total came to $22,285. That’s awfully affordable for an awful lot of people for an awfully good car.
Frank S. Washington is the editor of AboutThatCar.com.
This was printed in the December 4, 2011 – December 17, 2011 Edition
