8 reasons why new Focus matters
The humble hatchback’s doomed. Isn’t it?
HERE’S A BRAIN TEASER for you: name the most influential cars launched in Europe over the last 20 years. How about the Qashqai for inventing the crossover, the Leaf and Prius for popularising alternative powertrains, the Mini for making superminis aspirational and the X5 for making SUVs sporty? But there’s one more, a car that exerts a faintly mystical power on 40-something road testers, an unpretentious family hatchback that’s celebrating its twentieth birthday this year with an all-new model. That car is the Ford Focus. You know the story: before Focus, CAR dismissed Ford as the cynical purveyor of attractively styled but mechanically stunted ’80s cars. But a gaggle of engineers led by Welshman Richard Parry-Jones convinced management the Mk5 Escort’s replacement would be different. ‘It transformed us as a company,’ says Joe Bakaj, NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) engineer on the first Focus, now Ford of Europe’s product development boss. ‘And it set new standards for design, packaging, technology and driving dynamics.’
That it did, Joe, that it did. The 1998 Focus was a hatchback gamechanger, blooding a multi-link rear suspension with unequal-length arms, to alter the camber as the body rolls in corners. The enhanced grip accounts for some of that road-tester love, but the Focus did comfort too. It raised the bar for hatchback ride and handling; VW had to follow suit with the Golf Mk5’s independent rear end. The Focus also gave feelsome rack-and-pinion steering to the masses. And its New Edge design was the automotive equivalent of Cubist art, rendering neat and tidy designs like the Vauxhall Astra and Peugeot 306 as outmoded as Impressionism.
But that was 20 years ago: how do you make the Focus matter in 2018? Can it stem the flight to crossover SUVs? How does the new model, ahead of UK sales in September priced from £17,930, balance driver aids and driving dynamics? And how does the drivetrain line-up adapt, with such pressure on economy, emissions and electrification? Here’s how.
1 Under that handsome skin lurks a box-fresh chassis
'THIS WAS A one-time chance with an all-new vehicle,’ says Helmut Reder, the Focus’s vehicle line director. The new architecture gave Ford the opportunity to transform the proportions, cabin space, weight, electronics and aerodynamics. In short, everything.
This five- door hatch (here in ST-Line trim) is barely a thumb-width longer than the outgoing car, but it’s now class-leading on interior space, Ford claims. The base car’s 16-inch wheels have been dragged out to the corners, freeing up 2700mm between them (a 52mm wheelbase increase). That’s good for the proportions, as is the lower roof – and the ST-Line is dropped a further 10mm on its sports suspension, over 17in rims. And the new design, led by European design director Amko Leenarts, has lovely attention to detail. The line of the windscreen pillar points downwards precisely to the front wheel centre caps, and the triangular rear pillar sits directly over the back rim. Wraparound tail lamps visually extend the width of the car, and the voluptuous sheet metal on bonnet and doors is pinched to create muscles that beautifully catch the light. This design adds something no Focus has managed before: genuine desire.
The architecture employs a mix of metals and thicknesses to get the optimum blend of stiffness, weight saving and crash performance. The front structure and one crash load path are made from aluminium, while boron steel – which adds strength while reducing mass – is also used. This patchwork quilt of materials yields a maximum saving of 88kg compared with the outgoing car, while torsional rigidity improves by 20 per cent – but by up to half in an area that’s crucial for driving dynamics: suspension attachment.
2 No hatchback prioritises dynamics like this one
'THESE DAYS, DYNAMIC performance isn’t enough to sell cars. Connectivity, cabin space, the manmachine interface – if you’re not up to customers’ expectations, you don’t get considered,’ says Joe Bakaj.
That said, the development chief has reassuring words for car enthusiasts, and for customers who appreciate a different kind of connectivity, that between a communicative steering rack and a responsive front end. ‘ With the new architecture, you still get a car that’s fun to drive and our trademark steering feel, things that customers have always loved about the Focus. It puts a smile on your face on a country road.’
Two rear suspensions are offered. The smaller engines (1.0-litre petrol and 1.5-litre diesel) use a similar twist beam to the Fiesta ST, featuring Ford’s patented force vectoring springs, which channel cornering loads into the spring to boost lateral stiffness and sharpen turn-in. Bigger engines, plus the estate, plusher Vignale versions and the Active (think Focus that’s wandered onto an Audi Allroad production line) all get short-/long-arm (SLA) suspension. Rubber isolation bushes between body and rear subframe are claimed to reduce noise and vibration.
Customers can link the SLA with adaptive damping, which adjusts the shocks every two milliseconds based on inputs from the body, suspension and steering. And all models get the Focus’s first adaptive drive mode system, which varies the feel of the electric powerassisted steering, throttle, automatic transmission and even the Active Cruise Control through Eco, Normal and Sport modes. 4
3 Its aero is just one class-leading attribute
MARGINAL GAINS were the making of cycling’s Team Sky before its reputation went downhill faster than 130km/h descent king Marcus Burghardt. Ford too has been layering on incremental performance enhancements, to make its family hatchback cleave the air more smoothly. So all Focus models now have a vent outboard of the foglamps to channel part of the front airflow through the body and into the wheelarch. A secondary flow follows the lower bumper’s contours to the wheels, where the two streams unite to calm the air in this incredibly turbulent area of the car.
There are heaps more efficiency-boosting measures: a standard active front grille shutter, stiffer brake calipers to reduce drag from the pads, a host of underbody shields to smooth airflow under the car. And Ford has worked with Michelin to co- develop a new line of tyres that slash rolling resistance by one-fifth, supposedly without making the car handle like Bambi on ice.
The upshot is a five- door hatch with a drag coefficient of 0.273 – that’s ‘best-in- class by a big margin’ according to Helmut Reder. It also sums up just how difficult it is to extract improvements – the outgoing Focus posted 0.274. So to Ford’s best-in-class claims for handling and spaciousness you can add aerodynamics. That slickness helps yield a double- digit improvement in fuel efficiency.
4 Because there’s a Focus for everyone
FOCUS ESTATE
The estate preserves the hatch’s handsome side glass and surfacing, while grafting on a big rear overhang for a 1.7m load length. SLA rear axle frees up a 1.15m-wide load bay, and Ford is delighted with a parcel shelf you can work one-handed and stow easily.
FOCUS ACTIVE
Surprisingly attractive crossover variant, adding 4x4 styling and 30mm ride-height boost, without an SUV’s dynamic compromises. Doesn’t look over-bodied despite the platform limiting wheel size to 18s. Cabin gets textile seats and
rubberised trim.
FOCUS VIGNALE
Luxury trim (from £25,450) is fulilling its raison d’etre of driving up Ford transaction prices. Vignale is marked out externally with unique colours and a satin chrome strip across the car’s chin; inside there's leather upholstery and dashboard inserts made of ine-grain wood.
5 The cabin o ers space in spades
LET’S BE HONEST, the new Focus’s cabin will not have Volkswagen’s interior team stringing themselves up by their designer scarves. It majors on rational benefits rather than surprise-anddelight design or material flourishes.
The dashboard has been pushed 100mm closer to the engine, freeing up more space for occupants. Those in the rear are particularly spoiled, with more leg and shoulder room than in rival hatches. And Ford has made the middle rear seat more accommodating by minimising the central tunnel, to reduce knee and ear skirmishes.
That has an engineering implication: no room for a propshaft, which scotches the prospect of conventional four-wheel drive. Sources say Ford is considering a hang- on electric rear axle, as used by the Mini Countryman PHEV, as one approach for hybridisation and all-wheel drive. Which would be an intriguingly leftfield solution for the next Focus RS...
The big breakthrough – at least for Ford – is in connectivity, if customers specify an embedded modem. You can turn the car into a 4G wi-fi hotspot which works up to 10m away, even with the engine off, and tether up to 10 devices. Downloading the Ford Pass app enables you to remotely locate your car, check the fuel level and whether it’s locked, and warm up the cabin on cold days. The car will be able to alert the emergency services in the event of an accident too.
There’s also Ford’s ingenious MyKey: programme your testosterone-addled son’s key to restrict top speed and incoming calls, and disable the audio system if seatbelts aren’t in use. And that would be terminally damaging to his street cred, especially if the car has the 675 watt B&O Play sound system. 4
Mk1 1998 2005 Looked and drove like nothing else around; 3m sold in its European lifetime. Back then, SUVs were less than 4% of the C-segment market
Mk2 2005 2011 Diicult second album syndrome, though ive-pot ST started something great. 2.2m sold in Europe. By 2011,
SUVs totalled 16% of segment
Mk3 2011 2018 The global Focus, with big Chinese sales and a US footprint, was world’s top-selling car in 2012/13. Last year,
CSUVs took 34% of Euro sales
7 The drivetrains promise punch and parsimony
FOR A STEP CHANGE in fuel efficiency you need new engines, and three of the four Focus powerplants are box-fresh. The UK’s Dunton diesel R&D centre has developed a new 2.0-litre, while the 1.5 diesel is a joint effort with PSA Groupe. High-pressure common rails carefully meter out fuel to boost economy and suppress noise, while exhaust gas recirculation occurs over a wider operating range to minimise nitrogen oxide emissions. Also helping in the war on NOx is an AdBlue urea injection system on the 2.0-litre.
The big diesel also features Ford’s first steel piston: its physical size and maximum extension are reduced, as crucially is friction. Max power is 148bhp; the 1.5-litre comes with 94 or 118bhp. Joe Bakaj admits Ford can’t predict diesel demand due to the uncertainty facing the fuel: ‘Exhaust after-treatment to meet the Real Driving Emissions test means diesels are clean; it’s a shame society is turning away from them.’
That means the top-selling engine will likely be the upgraded 1.0-litre turbo petrol, available with 84, 99 or 123bhp. This triple gets a new cylinder head, higher-pressure injection and a catalyser that heats up more rapidly to minimise CO2.
The 1.0-litre – and its 1.5-litre three- cylinder brother – also feature cylinder deactivation and exhaust filters, reducing particulate emissions by 90 per cent. The 1.5-litre is largely the same as the unit in the new Fiesta ST (see page 24) but tuned for low-end torque rather than peak power.
Transmission is via six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic ’boxes. And what about fuel economy? Ford predicts an 11 per cent improvement, and base CO2 emissions of 94g/km for the 1.5-litre diesel, and 108g/km for the 1.0-litre petrol.
8 It’s more high-tech than today’s Golf
FORD’S BIG PITCH for the last Focus was its suite of driverassistance tech; the Mk4 doubles down on that promise. ‘ We have more driver-assistance systems than our closest competitors, the Golf, Astra and new Ceed,’ vows chief programme engineer Glen Goold.
The Focus is introducing two technologies we’ve tested in CAR’s Tech section: ZF’s Wrong Way Alert, which monitors no-entry signs to warn a Focus driving the wrong way down a motorway on-ramp, and Bosch Evasive Steering Assist, which adds or subtracts torque from your steering input to help avoid an upcoming obstacle. Another claimed family-hatch first is pre- collision detection system monitoring for cyclists, as well as pedestrians or other cars.
But perhaps the most appealing bit of kit for drivers using Britain’s network of gummed-up smart motorways is Active Cruise Control with Traffic Sign Recognition. The forward camera will monitor the variable speed limit and speed up or slow the Focus according to the road signs; throw in the car’s lane- centring and stop/start abilities and the Focus can theoretically surf jams all on its Level 2 lonesome, so long as you keep your hands on the wheel. The headlamps can be smart too, automatically dipping to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers, bending through curves and even adjusting the beam pattern to best illuminate upcoming corners.
There are more chapters to be written in the Focus tech story. Sources say a mild-hybrid Focus will follow in 2019, and the new architecture is future-proofed for plug-in capability too. And ‘the Ford performance team is hard at work at Lommel’ to up the ante on Focus driving dynamics with a hot ST version, admits Joe Bakaj. But that’s for another day. With this forensically conceived update, Ford looks good to deliver on Bakaj’s goal: ‘ To achieve the ultimate evolution of the Focus species.’
And be a worthy successor to one of the most influential
European cars of the past
20 years.