06 Dec 06
The Ford is also proving to be an easy car to live with. The quality of the latest Focus cabin is a huge improvement on its predecessors, with soft-touch plastics and pleasingly chunky controls. The full-colour satellite navigation system also does much to lift the ambience - although at £2,000 it's a pricey option. Other Focus-owning colleagues have criticised the quality of the Bluetooth hands-free phone system, but it works perfectly in my car and is of huge benefit on long distance journeys. The single fault to note concerns the front numberplate, which fell off and had to be stuck back on with gaffer tape.
The number plate is easy to repair, but the fuel consumption could be a long-term concern. The official figures such that the ST should return an average urban consumption of 20.5mpg and an overall combined of 30.4mpg, but this is nonsense. Even allowing for the amount of time I spend sitting in London traffic, my average consumption of 22.3mpg is pitiful. Couple this with a meagre 55litre (12.1 gallon) fuel tank and you have a real world range of less than 250miles.
It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I drive like my pants are on fire, or whether I drive like my testicles are attached to the front bumper: the net result is pretty much the same. Quite why it should be so bad is difficult to fathom. There are larger, heavier cars with bigger engines that perform better in the real world - Jaguar's XK is one. I can only hope that the consumption will improve as the engine loosens up.
That is for the future to decide, but for now I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm enjoying this car and revelling in its role as the everyman sports car. Even after a week spent in a Lamborghini Gallardo, I still enjoyed the drive home in the Ford.
With time, I reckon I could even start to enjoy its lurid paint scheme...
