Short Take Road Test
The bottom line, up top: This latest Ford Focus is the best small car for sale in America today. The sedan pummeled four other runabouts in a recent comparison test, a victory made more impressive by the goodness found across a segment historically filled with what could generously be described as “total crap.” The 2012 Focus is so excellent, in fact, that only one small car beats that comparo-winning Focus, and that’s the one tested here: an SE hatchback with a five-speed manual transmission.
Great Manual, Great Engine
The comparo car triumphed in spite of its PowerShift six-speed dual-clutch automatic, which most of us feel isn’t very good. Instead of being free to do what such boxes do best—execute whip-crack ratio swaps—it’s programmed to impersonate a torque-converter autobox, slurring shifts and generally making a nuisance of itself. Ford’s latest estimates say 93 percent of Focus buyers will opt for the PowerShift; we say that’s a lot of people who should learn to drive a stick. The manual’s action is direct, the engagement is positive, and the throw length is just right. Clutch effort is well matched to the resistance of the shifter and gas pedal, something too many manual setups simply get wrong.
The manual is bolted to Ford’s 2.0-liter direct-injection Ti-VCT four, and it’s the best small engine we’ve driven from the Blue Oval. With 160 hp and 146 lb-ft, it’s not particularly burly—we hit 60 in 7.3 seconds and covered the quarter-mile in 15.9—but it is incredibly smooth all the way to the redline, with no surge or drop-off in power delivery. It’s an all-new design crafted using existing (albeit reworked) tooling from previous Ford four-cylinders. Fuel economy is rated at 26 mpg city/36 highway; we achieved 29 mpg over more than 800 miles of mixed driving.
Get the Sport Package—Seriously
Besides the automatic, the other key omission from our test car was the slow and finicky MyFord Touch option. We instead had the regular MyFord setup, which also can be slow (especially the transitions from screen to screen) but is more intuitive and includes plenty of goodies such as caller ID, text-message alerts, Sync voice activation, and a high-res info screen in the gauge cluster.
The SE hatchback starts at $18,790, and this example hit our lot with an additional $2500 in options. The Rapid Spec package 203A tacked $1195 to the sticker and brought the MyFord setup, Sirius satellite radio, cruise, and USB and aux inputs, among other baubles. The Winter package is a $570 necessity for those in cold-weather country, adding heated front seats, all-weather floor mats, and heated power side mirrors with integrated turn signals.
Absolutely no SE buyer should skip the Sport package, a smokin’ deal at $695. That paltry sum adds 16-inch aluminum wheels, a piano-black grille, different interior trim, leather for the steering wheel and shift knob, and—here’s the good stuff—rear disc brakes and grippy and comfortable cloth sport seats.
For vanity’s sake, we might tack on the handsome, dark 17-inch wheels seen in these pictures—they fill the wheel wells better than the 16s that were on the car when we tested it and are a serious bargain at $495 for four. We would, however, like to drive an example with them to see how they affect the well-sorted suspension’s superb ride-and-handling balance. No “for a small car” qualifier necessary here—this Focus shames a lot of more expensive vehicles in the ride department while delivering agile, eager dynamics and great roadholding ability (0.88 g). It helps that the five-door’s structure is incredibly rigid, which allows the suspension to be tuned more for body control rather than for mitigating vibrations and chassis flex.
This Is the Focus to Buy
The Focus is easy to drive quickly—and fun, too. Turn-in is crisp, with a mere hint of understeer, at which point you briefly jump out of the throttle to swing the back around and revector the nose. The electrically boosted steering communicates more information now than when we sampled preproduction models. It’s hyperaccurate and nicely weighted. The brakes offer great feel and are easy to modulate, turning in a 179-foot 70-to-0-mph test result.
Ignoring the fact that the stick is unavailable on the higher SEL and Titanium trims (a mortal sin in our book, although Ford tells us consumer interest has it reexamining manual availability), we’d skip them because they can get pricey, quickly—a fully kitted Titanium hatch tops $30,000. Yikes. So here’s the bottom line, actually at the bottom: This five-speed SE hatchback with the Sport pack is the one you want. It has stylish looks, five-door practicality, a sweet shifter, great seats, and all the equipment you need at an agreeable price. If the 2012 Focus is the best small car on sale today, this SE is the king of kings—at least until the ST arrives.
