Farewell Ford Focus

Yes, it was time to say goodbye to our Ford Focus Mk2.5, traded in for the KIA cee'd you will find detailed elsewhere hereabouts. I can't say I was sorry to see it go. Never bonded with it, somehow.

But as you can (almost) see here, it looks as good on the day of departure as it did in 2008 when it arrived all shiny and new.

Well... if you could see closer, you'd spot a lot of parking dents, and most of the Ford badges have corroded, which was quite annoying.

But generally speaking, looking good and the inside was unblemished, mostly. It had 89,369 when we handed it over, all done by us.

So... why the lack of enthusiasm for this car, which it has to be said, never let us down and returned a healthy 54mpg average over its entire life?

Well. Again, as detailed elsewhere here, it had followed on from a very similarly spec'd Astra, and that's the problem, it wasn't as good as the Astra. That car served us to about 130k miles, and was less trouble. I've had a few Fords, and I have to say that they've not been particularly well screwed together, in my opinion. Around the 70k mile mark the Focus started to rattle a lot and feel a bit 'loose', and that had happened in my previous Escort too. But the Astra was as solid as new over a longer distance.

And the Focus had suffered a couple of very costly 'mishaps' along the way, that have left a bad feeling, firstly about Ford, and secondly about my local Ford dealer. To the point that I would imagine it unlikely I'll ever by a Ford again. Sorry Ford.

The first disaster was the Fusebox saga, again, a post about that here. Turns out this marque of Focus has a design flaw that allows condensation caused by the air-con to drip onto the fusebox, corroding the terminals and causing electrical failure. I am not by any means the only sufferer from this problem, but Ford remain in denial - and are happy to extract upwards of £650 to put it right from your hapless owner.

And then there was my local dealer in Llangefni, who when I asked them to investigate a steering wheel wobble diagnosed the cause as drive-shafts, replaced them at huge cost, handed the car back to me - still with the wheel wobble. After much negotiation I got the massive bill down to £400. I then took the car to ATS and they balanced the wheels very carefully and the wobble was gone. As was my £400 and two perfectly good drive shafts. Epic fail, W R Davies, and I will never be back.

On the up side though, it went well, it gave good economy, it's smart looking, it started first time every time, and never let us down. It is a very nice red colour. It was quiet for a diesel, and handled very well.

It just never floated our boat, somehow. Good luck to the new owner, who I saw driving it on this very day. I expect it will serve you well. Just don't take it to Llangefni to get it serviced!

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