Not since my first car, an Austin 1300 built by the notorious British Leyland, have I owned a car with such poor quality. That the Ford Motor Company is in trouble comes as no surprise to me, if this is their shining example. Yet it won "Car of the Year". I can only assume that the journalists who voted for this piece of junk, either had a very limited selection of new vehicles to choose from, or their cars were specially prepared, or they never had to live with this abomination.
My buying philosophy is to buy cars approximately one year old, with up to 20,000 miles on the clock. At least this way, it should have had the first dealer service before the economies kick in. I can't afford to buy new. The Focus fitted the bill. It had 18,000 miles, and was a 1.6 LX version.
Problems started within 1 minute of driving it off the forecourt. The SRS airbag light stayed on. Incredibly, Ford only gave a 1 year warranty, and this was due to expire in a few days. So the dealer had to sort this one out at Ford expense. From then on, everything was my problem.
Next came a peculiar situation of the boot lid releasing itself. Driving along the motorway with my possesions flying out became a regular event. I got that sorted at its next dealer service, but I had to pay (through the nose), despite the service manager admitting that it had been a common fault, and Ford had fixed most of them.
In between times, I was discovering a new and interesting phenomenon, the empty on full petrol tank. Most of the time, the gauge read correctly, but if you filled the tank and drove off, you could be left thinking that you'd holed the tank. The gauge would suddenly plummet to zero, and the warning light would come on. Fortunately, as the tank genuinely emptied, normal service would be resumed.
Then came the lunacy of poor design. I buy hatchbacks for a good reason, I want to put the rear seats down. Yes, I know you have to take the head restraints off, but it seems the designer didn't. They couldn't be taken off with the seats in the upright position. Because the roof was in the way. And they couldn't come off in the folded position either. So, imagine having to hold the seats at an angle, fiddle with the release catch, pull the restraints out, and then fold down the seat. Didn't mention that in the brochure. Putting them back in was even more fun.
After that came the gearbox. Strange how you take things for granted. Like the spring that defaults the gear lever to the 3rd/4th gear position. Because at a roundabout, when you're trying to accelarate to avoid the oncoming traffic, (and why don't they switch on the control lights at the Middleton exits in the evening rush hour period) it can be very disconcerting to go from 2nd gear into 5th as you instinctively push the lever over to the right, instead of it snicking into 3rd as it used to.
The final straw was the clutch which came to a juddering halt at about fortysomething thousand miles. This was poorly and expensively replaced, and therafter the car behaved as though it still needed the clutch replacing. All return trips to the garage were met with "it's okay", which it clearly wasn't.
I'd had enough. I bought a Honda Civic, with similar specification.
Two lessons were learned from this experience.
1. Never buy a Ford again for the remainder of my life
2. Only buy Hondas for the remainder of my life.