A European Sport Sedan--From Ford
Welcome to the wintry top of the 2012 Ford Focus mountain, the fully
equipped, massively geared up "Titanium" edition of the all-new compact
sedan. This trim package, starting at $22,270, is $6,000 above the
Focus S sedan base camp. With its glossy "piano black" plastic inside
and out, aluminum wheels, 8-inch navi/audio/climate/phone touch screen,
and its frosty overburden of chrome brightwork, things are very shiny
at the summit. You'll need your snow goggles. By the way, secretly,
your Sherpa hates you.
Dan Neil reviews the 2012 Ford Focus
"Titanium" edition, a trim package of the compact sedan that starts at
more than $22,000, $6,000 more than the Focus S sedan.
The
Titanium sedan (the available five-door hatch is $495 more) asks you to
consider this Aristotelian question: Would you ever want an
extravagantly equipped version of a desperately cheap compact? As I
read it, the Titanium Focus has the most content of any car at this
price point, including rain-sensing wipers; rearview camera/sensing
system; leather sport seats with six-way power and lumbar adjustment;
and a 10-speaker Sony audio system, among many electronics. This thing
is a slagheap of silicon.
Throw a couple thousand more at this car and you'll get a power moon
roof; heated seats; voice-activated navigation; a Lexus-like
self-parking feature; and a sport wheel-and-suspension package that
shreds California back roads like Wolverine going through Arrow shirts.
That's a lot of car for around $26,000 and?to my point?arguably better
equipped than an entry-level BMW or Infiniti.
But
in the end, you're still driving a Ford Focus, a brand and a car that
has historically had the glamour of sweaty feet. Few nameplates outside
of Amana could be more appliance-like. Ford has sold more than 10
million Focuses globally since 2000.
Here we encounter the tyranny of
brand. Would you buy a Timex watch that keeps time better than the
atomic clock in Boulder; a Piper Seminole that can break the sound
barrier; a bottle of Andre Cold Duck that out-sparkles Dom Pérignon?
Would you, in other words, pay less for more?
With the Focus Titanium, maybe you would. And this is the important
thing about the car, transcending its fuel economy (figure about 28/38
miles per gallon), or middling 0-60 times (9 seconds). The brand, the meaning
of Ford is changing, becoming more elastic on the high end. Bearing in
mind that the Blue Oval has always had more cachet overseas than it has
had in the U.S., Ford's Q score is wildly up these days. Indeed,
compared with Ford, Justin Bieber is just treading water.
For this sudden love, you could credit many things. Consumer
affection is in some ways a zero-sum game, and Toyota's loss over the
past two years is definitely Ford's gain. Ford was also the only
Detroit car maker to avoid a government-funded bankruptcy?winners don't
take bailouts, right? You have to send the product planners a case of
beer, as well: Ford's embrace of in-cabin information technology, such
as its deal with Microsoft (the Sync system), has given the brand a bit
of a hipster edge, as has its whole-hog social networking effort. Ford
had socially networked brand advocates running around pushing its
Fiesta for a year before the car landed Stateside.
With the new Focus Titanium, we are
looking at the stirrings of a notion Henry Ford never remotely
considered: Ford as an aspirational brand.
And, it has to be said, part of the desirability of the new Focus
has to do with it being an undiluted European car. Based on Ford's
global C platform (104.3-inch wheelbase), the Focus was largely
designed and engineered in Germany, with a powertrain sorted in England
(happily, however, the U.S.-spec Focus will be assembled in Michigan).
Our previous Focus was basically warmed over for a decade, remedial in
power and performance, while the European Focus grew more sophisticated
through two full redesigns. No more. According to Ford execs, the new
Focus has 80% global commonality, with the balance being on account of
market-specific safety and emission standards.
2012 Ford Focus Titanium Sedan
And
so, the European styling, the intentional modernism of the shape,
wind-curried and tight-drafted, with a great stance for a small car (a
half-inch lower and 3 inches longer than the previous car). I
appreciate that Ford design didn't attempt to graft on its Gillette
razor grille with the multiple blades (cf., Ford Edge and Fusion).
Instead, the Focus gets a powerful triptych-trapezoidal grille, which
makes the car instantly recognizable at a distance?what designers call
"down the road" graphic. For styling rivals, you'd have to look at
Euro-only cars like the Citroën C4 or Peugeot 308. Stateside, compared
with the Focus, the Chevy Cruze looks like a lump of arterial
cholesterol.
The Focus is a seriously nice car on the inside, enough so that Ford
engineers and marketers quietly ventured the Audi A3 and A4 as
competitor. Talk about hubris. And yet, the Titanium interior is pretty
artful, a sinuous composition in soft-touch materials, alloy-like
painted trim, textured fabric, that piano-black plastic?assuming your
Steinway is made by Mattel?and lots of electrons. The center stack is
dominated by the 8-inch touch screen, above a gloss-black panel with
the rotary controller for the Sony sound system (there's a smaller LCD
between the gauges in the instrument cluster). The leather steering
wheel has more buttons than a band uniform, offering triple redundancy
for phone and audio. I think. Frankly, it would take more than a day
behind the wheel to become fluent in these interfaces.
I was pleased to discover a traditional hand-brake lever to the
right of the shift gate. In these uncertain times, you never know when
you may have to execute a bootleg turn.
At a press event in Southern California last week, I drove two trim
levels: the volume car, the SE ($17,270 MSRP), with optional 17-inch,
all-season tires and five-speed manual transmission; and the Titanium
sedan, with optional 18-inch summer tires, sport suspension and
dual-clutch automatic transmission. In either fitment, the Focus proved
to be damn crafty and athletic. The chassis feels hammer-hard and
stout, paying dividends in the kind of cabin ambience you might expect
in a larger and more expensive car. The ride quality is even and serene
even when the asphalt isn't. The Focus's Noise-Vibration-Harshness
(NVH) team just murdered it.
Fling the car into the corners and
the Focus's handling is yar and well balanced; it's even tossable in a
Euro-spec sort of way. The car gathers understeer as steering angles
increase?it pushes like a front-drive car will, in other words, with an
increasing bleating from the front tires. But transitional,
corner-to-corner manners are solid and reassuring, and the electric
power steering direct, linear and reasonably communicative.
The string-back glove set will appreciate the torque-vectoring
system built into the front axle. Much like a mechanical limited-slip
differential, torque vectoring subtly pulses the brake of the inside
front wheel in a corner, directing more torque to the outside wheel,
actually helping bend the car into a corner. Once there, you can go to
the whip harder and sooner. Combined with the Titanium's optional
18-inch summer rubber and leaner sport suspension, the torque vectoring
turns a fairly good front-driver into a fervid and stubborn little
gymkhana car.
If only, alas, there was more torque
to vector. The Ford chassis engineers have so outclassed the
powertrain?a 2.0-liter, direct-injection four-banger with 160
horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque, and that at a cringe-y 4,450
rpm?that you can't help but walk away feeling that the car is woefully
underpowered. When was a sport hatch slower to 60 than 9 seconds, after
all? You may wish the manual tranny had a sixth gear or that there were
steering wheel-mounted paddle shifters for the six-speed, dual-clutch
automatic. The little Up/Down button on the shifter is worthless.
You may tire of having to kick this thing like it's a lazy court jester
to get it to move. One way or another, driving enthusiasts are likely
to feel unrequited by the powertrain.
The good news is that Ford will soon offer an engine worthy of the
chassis, a 250-hp turbocharged four-cylinder in a performance variant
called the ST. Until then, for me, the Titanium feels a little like
fool's gold.
But man, Ford sure looks like the smartest kid in class these days.
And I relish the notion that the Focus, of all cars, could nip at the
heels of Audi and Acura. Really. Go tell it on the mountain.
Corrections & Amplifications
The 2012 Ford Focus is available with a five-speed manual
transmission or a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. An
earlier version of this column incorrectly said the manual transmission
was a six-speed.
)
