A month and a thousand miles with the Focus ST

[clyde]

I'll hit 1,000 miles in the ST on the way home tonight on day #33.

Overall, I still really like the car. A lot. However, it's difficult to fully divorce the car itself from what I've been doing with it. Driving into work every day (weather permitting) and skipping the Metro has put me in another place mentally. On the way in each morning, I feel like it's a special day or something. When I walk into the building, I'm not already carrying a bunch of negativity or anything like that. The day at work goes faster. This job and this place still suck beyond belief, but it all seems to pass a bunch quicker. When I'm walking to the garage, I keep catching myself with a stupid grin on my face. It's bizarre. Then, when I get home, I'm in a great mood and not just because I'm home instead of at work, but because I'm in a great mood. Again, bizarre.

Thing is, I'd probably feel pretty similarly even if it were a Camry, so I wan to be careful about ascribing anything good to the Focus that should really just be credited to car > public transit. With that in mind...

The car is pretty fun to drive on a daily basis although I still haven't really had an opportunity to drive it in fun scenarios. An odd turn here and there and an occasional chance to hit the throttle hard for more than an instant, but that's about it.

Power and Driving

In traffic, it's f'ing great. It's small enough to scoot through everything. More than enough power to be *there* right now. Sealed well enough to block out most annoying noises (mufflerless civics, ultra-low frequency bass from other cars, etc).

Using the power in traffic in the city on lumpy or broken pavement isn't all perfect. Torque steer will jerk the wheel with an initial big throttle application. Flooring it any where in first or second on urban pavement, particuarly in the right lane with a pronounced crown, could well send the car into the curb or the next lane. The wide tires will follow the ruts, too. It's relativley predictable, though, and easy to counter...just need to be ready for it. Add cold exterior temps and wet pavement and things get even more exciting if you drive that hard. In many ways, it all just makes it a bit more exciting and involving experience. Not quite as intuitive as similar power through rear wheel drive (or probably AWD, too), but I don't really find it objectionable.

On wider, flatter, smoother suburban roads, it's not nearly as much of an issue. The torque compensating thing does its business before you get too far out of line and it's pretty straight and true sailing if you keep the throttle down after that. In the city, it's more often a quick stab at the throttle and not a full run up, so the compensation thing doesn't really get a chance to do much. Even when it does, I think the broken and lumpy pavement leads to some less than desireable results.

It doesn't take much effort to get into the traction control with all the nannies on. At least not with summer tires in mostly cold and often wet weather so far.

It's way more than quick enough than necessary for anything in commuting.

Visibility out is less than ideal. To the passenger side rear, there are so many interior lines you're looking through that it makes for a busy sight picture. Takes just that much more effort than it should to locate and track any vehicles that might be there. To the driver's side rear, it's not very good. Very small gap to see through the windows to the quarter area. As I better learn what I'm seeing and using with the mirrors, I'm getting more comfortable, but I haven't been able to quit the feeling that I'm missing something every time.

Mileage

Over the first 893 miles, I've averaged 19.5 MPG and been using 93. Most of my driving has been commuting in more-go-than-stop stop-and-go driving. Following the on-board display of average MPG (which is proving to be rather accurate for most fillups, which makes me wonder about the honesty of the stations where I filled up on tanks that weren't so accurate), it's kind of amusing to see the effect of short shifting and driving a gear or two higher than what feels comfortable. Looks like it could be making a difference of 10-12% or so.

19.5 MPG doesn't seem that great. The EPA rating is 23 for city. Not sure how I could do much better than 21 on my commute if I really tried. It's not all real city driving. There are usually several extended constant 50mph stretches. No idea what I'd see for highway MPG.

Compounding the mileage is the small 12 gallon tank, so filling up around 1/4 tank means filling up about every 180 miles. That's more often than I'd like.

Interior

Speaking of mirrors, the chintzy manual flip, no homelink interior rearview mirror feels really out of place. Everything else in the intrior looks/feels like it's of decent quality which makes the mirror stand out. SOme people have added Gentek mirrors. I'm considering. The side mirrors... They're heated and that works as well as I've seen in anything else. The tow-mirror like insets at that outter upper corners is still taking some getting used to, but what I've come to really like about them is seeing vehicles 2 lanes over that are in the area where if we both changed into the same lane, I'd see it happening before it happened. That's kinda cool.

Sitting in the car, I've come to be very unfond of the headrests. I've learned a little more about what current regulated requirements are and it sounds as if it leaves OEMs with two choices, passive or active head restraints. Active ones take more work and expense to design, certify and build, but they offer a lot more adjustability. Passive ones are a lot cheaper and easier, but to meet the requirements, there is very little adjsutability. Recaro's choice (not Ford's, from what I've read) was to use passive ones in these seats. The end result is that the front of the headrest is a little further forward than I'd like relative to how far forward the top 12" or so of the seat are. To make full contact with my upoper back, my head has to be on the headrest and tilted down a little, which doesn't work. It's not a horrible thing and it may not be an issue at all for most people, but it leaves the seats not quite as comfortable as they otherwise would be for me. Flipping the headrests around might be an option (it will be a requirement with a helmet), but I haven't tried because I don't think about it until I've been in the car for 30 minutes. Other than that, the seats are great. If you are of significant girth, you may not like the seats, though. The only thing that bugs me about he bolstering is that it feels like I'm making a lot of contact on the door side when I get in the car and I fear for what that may do long term.

The cupholders are kinda,not-so-great. A large coffee cup from your favorite coffee shop will fit, but the flaps they use in the cup holder kinda dig in a bit and the armrest cushion kinda pushes the cup forward a little. I'm always a little scared that I'm going to rip the cup or otherwise spill somehow. Doesn't leave a lot of confidence. OTOH, the front doors have nice, deep, sculpted "map pockets" that have an area that's perfect for 20oz water/soda bottles and makes them easy to access.

The 12v power port is immediately in front of the cup holders and behind the shifter. Good luck on plugging anything in that connects to something you put on the dash or windshiled (radar detector, GPS or whatever). The cord will get in your way.

The seat heater dials (0-5) are in the same area. Given how they operate, and there are so many levels, I'm not wild about the location. Too much effort and thought and you really need to look away to see if you set it where you want. Plus. extra fear that if you spill your drink, you'll also short the switches or worse.

The whole area with the 12v and cup holders are in a different configuration in the base and ST2 cars (and they don't have seat heaters as an option) than they are in the ST3. Can't comment on them, though.

Climate control is a little weird. It works okay and having real controls for almost everything is great. The fan noise can be a little loud and it doesn't drop off as quickly as I'd like it to. The dual zone controls create some issues. I'll set it where I want it and then my wife will set it 7 or 8 degrees different in either direction. This doesn't lead to great results. I'm not sure why small cars need different driver and passgenger side controls. Then, the next time I get in the car without my wife, I waste a minute or two looking for a way to turn off the dual setting. Oh. That's right...it's the one thing where I have to use the MyFord Touch controls for climate. You can turn the dual climate on by adjusting the passenger side temp control, but to turn it off, you have to go into MyFord Touch. Every other climate function can be controlled through the regular climate buttons, but you cannot turn off the dual zone controls (that I've found, anyway). This baffles me.

I still don't know what all the buttons on the steering wheel do. I do wish the audio controls were on the left spoke instead of the right one. I think every car I've ever had with steering wheel controls for the stereo have had them on the left side. I liked them there. Not so fond of them on the right side.

There is plenty of room in the backseat for my nearly 11 and nearly 9 year old girls (who are both about the same size). They have plenty of storage and they offer no complaints about being back there.

My Ford Touch

A big thing about the car is MyFord Touch and all that it does. It has issues. Once I accepted that it has issues and will deal with them, it all became much easier. I don't really understand why it does the things it does the way it does them, but generally, I pretty much like it. It's one of those things that mostly works and mostly works right, but if you want to, you can focus on what doesn't work or doesn't work right. If you're inclined to look at it negatively, you'll hate it and never find peace with it. It's kind of like an Apple vs [competitor] debate. No matter which side you're on, you can't get past the other side's flaws and dismiss or minimize the flaws of your system of choice.

Everything it does wrong or not well would be such a smaller issue if only it were faster. If it repsonded to button presses immediately, that would take care of a lot. If it acted faster in response to voice commands, that would take care of a lot, too. For the most part it's just a little pokey in response to inputs, but it's quite liveable. A few things are really slow (like searching for a POI by voice...ugh).

Then there's the wacky broken stuff. Like when having it remember your setting choice to not display the warning screen if if you disable the 911 assist feature (uses your bluetooth connected phone to auto dial 9-1-1 if the airbags go off). As it is, it remembers it for several car starts and then forgets and starts showing the warning again...and it takes a number of start sequeneces before it will remember again. I don't know why.

Screen

In the morning and evening, the auto-dimming funciton for MFT is kind of annoying. The brightness steps have a fair amount of room between them and when it changes, it's kind of distracting (and it took me a couple weeks to be not keep htinking it was somehow broken). It also changes the map display from day to night based on some kind of logic I do not understand. This may be self inflicted, beacuse if there was a setting for it to change based on ambient light, I probably set it that way rather than something based on sunrise/sunset. I should look for such a setting and change it if it's there.

Overall, the screen is pretty nice. My earlier comments about how much pressure is required to make a press may have been wrong as it doesn't seem to really take much effort. I don't know if there's some kind of break in period where it needs to be used a little, or if it took an expecation adjustment after so many years with iPhone/iPad use. Either way, it's not something I'd even think about now.

The screen is plenty bright enough in any sun I've dealt with yet. The greasy fingerprint marks are rarely an issue. At certain angles, they do pick up a lot of sun glare, though. At night, brightness seems to be just right and it doesn't give me any glare issues. During the day, no issues with polarized sunglass lenses. (Oakley Jawbones anyway, can't speak to any others).

Navigation

I have the navigation preference to always route by shortest route. It wants me to take a different routes between my house and work than what I want to take. The routes it wants me to take have a nominal 50+ minute time estimate and the ones I edit it into will show at 35 minutes or so. I don't know why.

Navigation uses Sirius Travel Link for traffic info. It gives me traffic warnings that are not and will not affect my route and asks me if I want details, to avoid, or ignore. I don't know why.

Auto rerouting when deviating from the course sometimes happens very quickly, sometimes it takes a little while and sometimes has to be done manually. I don't know why.

It seems to be kind of aware of time restricted left turns in DC. Maybe not, though. I'm not sure.

Through Sirius Travel Link, it gets weather info and maps. The maps take so long to draw and are so lacking in local detail, I'm not sure what good they do.

I don't know if it's MFT or not, but the small info display between the tach and speedo displays upcoming turn info, showing distance, direction you're supposed to turn, etc. It also shows the name of the street you'll turn onto. Sometimes. But not all the time. Sometimes one part of the name if it's long enough. Sometimes another part of it. And, still, sometimes none of it. I don't know why.

Phone

It will audibly read or display text messages recieved by my phone, but there is no way to send messages out, either canned or using speech to text. Supposedly this may be a pissing match between Microsoft and everyone else. You can do it with Windows phones because they support an MS bluetooth standard, but not with iOS or Android phones because they support the regular industry standards instead. OTOH, the reading of messages didn't start on iOS until 6.1, so, who knows. Nonetheless, it's a pretty cool feature.

I've had some problems answering calls and having everything hook up right, but I don't know if it's been user error or not. Small sample size.

Phonebook listings on screen are kind of pain. Too much stuff.

Stereo

I can't really tell you if it sounds good or like crap. I'm happy enough with it, but there may be a good chance my standards are lower than yours.

The stereo has a lot of options. AM, FM, HD, Sirius, USB, Bluetooth and maybe some others. It's enough that it won't show all sources on one screen, so it can take extra long to get from one source to another. There doesn't seem to be any way to hide ones you don't want or resequence them. Most of the sources have multiple bands of presets, too. So, if you use the steeringwheel or dahs mounted buttons, you have to cycle through each preset as if it were its own source. And it takes a few seconds between each press for it to take.

I am liking Sirius better than I've liked satellite radio in the past. It changes stations faster than other cars I've been in, but it's still not instant and I still find it difficult to find a station I can stick with for more than a few minutes. At least there's the NHL channel. I don't know if I'm going to want to spend on the subscription after the intro period runs out.

I'm not too fond of how music played over Bluetooth is implemented. Sounds okay for what it is, but kind of a pain in the ass to choose what to listen to. I still haven't gotten a USB drive, but I did have my phone plugged in to a USB port for a day. After indexing, it looks like that may be a fine choice.

Climate Control

It's like a copy of the hard climate control buttons a foot or so below the MFT screen, except it has a button marked "DUAL" which is missing from the hard buttons. It would be better if instead of displaying the temp settings on the screen at all times in the corner and pressing it taking you to the climate control screen, it just had the word duel and pressing it would toggle the dual zone state.

Other

It's not really the car, but I added a ProClip mount and holder that gives me a direct wire into the car's power. I'm pretty happy with it, but it doesn't let me access music on the phone via USB. ProClip has a bunch of holders that will work with USB, but that's its own PITA that I didn't want to deal with.

Semi-related to the MFT display brightness, the auto-headlights are pretty nervous. This time of year, they seem to cycle five or ten times each way on my ~45 minute commute unless it's really cloudy. The sensor is at the base of the windshield and below the VA registration sticker that I still haven't removed. It appears that the presence of the sticker reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor under most circumstances. I wonder if removing the sticker will make the lights cycle more or less often than they do now. I should also see if there is a sensitivity control for the auto lights that could make it less jumpy.

I've had a few cars now with automatic lights, but this is the first where I've used the setting. My knee often hits the knob when I get in the car (see the seat/side bloster thing above). Just leaving them on auto is the easier course of action.

Not sure what I'm forgetting.

tl;dr

After a month and 1,000 miles, I'd buy it again.

[clyde]

Had a momentary super scary moment this morning when the pickup a few vehicles in front of me started spinning at 30mph on an icy bridge. No one touched anything.

Snow tires are on the list for next winter.

[JST]

Originally Posted by clyde

Had a momentary super scary moment this morning when the pickup a few vehicles in front of me started spinning at 30mph on an icy bridge. No one touched anything.

Snow tires are on the list for next winter.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the grip that the Neros offer, both in warm and cold weather, at least in sort-of bullshit city driving. Can't comment on their snow capabilities, obvs., since we still haven't had any.

I might go with a set of those or similar year round and save my $$ and garage space for autocrossing rubber (if you decide to go that route).

[rumatt]

Originally Posted by clyde

tl;dr

After a month and 1,000 miles, I'd buy it again.

Congrats.

[lupinsea]

Nice write-up, Clyde! Sounds like a good pick.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by JST

I've been pleasantly surprised with the grip that the Neros offer, both in warm and cold weather, at least in sort-of bullshit city driving. Can't comment on their snow capabilities, obvs., since we still haven't had any.

I might go with a set of those or similar year round and save my $$ and garage space for autocrossing rubber (if you decide to go that route).

Garage space isn't an issue (even less so if I get rid of the bent Corvette wheels that are taking up some space and some very old, very hard R comps). A set of 16" wheels and Dunlop SP Winter Sport 3Ds (most expensive 16" snow tire listed on Tirerack right now in the right 16" size) is under $1000.

At this point, that's my inlcination. We'll see where I am in the fall when I will need to commit.

[wdc330i]

I was glad to have snows on the 328iT crossing the 14th street bridge early this am. Covered in ice.

[Pinecone]

Interesting. I feel more rested and less stressed by taking public transportation versus driving into DC.

We are averaging in the low 30s MPG on the Abarth in mixed highway and local driving. Local only, we see 28 - 29 MPG.

[Sharp11]

Clyde, next time, could you add a little more detail?

Seriously, good write-up.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Interesting. I feel more rested and less stressed by taking public transportation versus driving into DC.

The amount of time you spend in third world countries could have something to do with that.

We are averaging in the low 30s MPG on the Abarth in mixed highway and local driving. Local only, we see 28 - 29 MPG.

I'm a little disappointed with the mileage I'm getting, but not enough to really care.