Focus ST (or, Clyde shit and got off the pot)

*clyde* · 01-15-2013, 12:20 AM

Some of you may remember my Ford GT write up a few years ago. This ain't that. This is kinda like a lupinsea post with less photos.

It's one thing to hop in a car, get the seat adjusted and go attack some cones. It's another to live with it (after the epic hemming, hewing, and waiting). I'm at about the 72 hour mark of living with it and have driven about 150 miles. Driving it has been fun. Getting to know MyFord Touch and Sync has been less fun, but that will need it's own thread at some point. It doesn't seem as awful as some make it out to be, but it is so thoroughly interwoven into operating the car, if you have problems with it, you're pretty much doomed.

Driving It

Starting with the hard traditional bits, it's mostly pretty cool. It never feels slow or like it's lacking for power, regardless of where it is in the rev range. Fifth and sixth gears are, well, fifth and sixth gears in a boosted little banger, so plan accordingly.

Power delivery is very smooth. There may be some turbo lag, but it blends is smoothly that it may not be worth finishing this paragr…

Everything I've read has said what a great job Ford's torque compensating system does. if that's true, I'm not sure I'd want to drive the car without it. Stomping on it in third gear from 60 mph puts you in another lane at 80 mph faster than you can think "no fucking way." It's not violent torque steer, but it's very strong. And it's present just about everywhere where the fun needle is in motion. There are some tunes available that bring power up a good bit under the curve. I don't know if I'm going to go that route. Need to decide whether I'm going to autocross it and how anything I do to it might affect where I can run it legally.

It's kind of hard to talk much about the transmission. The kind of driving and weather here has limited what I can do. No hard shifting yet, so I haven't had the pleasure of the 1-2 *BANG* from the engine rolling around almost unconstrained by some reportedly very soft motor mounts.

The shifter may be the most unpleasant physical feeling item in the car. While it's precise and generally feels okay, there's sometimes a kind of rubbery feeling to it that I don't remember ever feeling in other cars. It's as if some of the bushings are just a tiny fraction too small and or their contact edges are just a little softer than the rest of the rest and it allows the slightest bit of vibration. Sometimes. There is at least one shifter bushing kit out there. If it's legal for where I might run the car, I'll do it, else live with it.

When you shift, sometimes you shift down…or downshift. And when you downshift you like to heel-toe. Well, in other cars you do. Can't do it in this car. This is the only "How the hell did they get this SO fucking wrong?" problem with the car I can see so far. Roll your foot over off the brake and it doesn't come anywhere close to the gas pedal. Even a proper traditional heel-toe is just barely doable with lots of concentration. It's a seriously sour point. Someone figured out a 5 minute, $5 way to add some shims to raise the gas pedal, but it involves drilling which may make it a no-no for stock even if the shims are removed for use. If there is no way to adjust the pedal on its own, I'm not sure what I'll do to address it. Not being able to heel-toe on an autocross course is livable. Not being able to do it on the street is not. This is the one absolutely-must-fix problem with the car.

I haven't had the chance to do any really spirited driving, so I'll fall back to my comments in July about driving the pre-production car. For regular city/suburban driving, the chassis is very well tuned. Patches of broken pavement are swallowed with well controlled motions and a near total lack of crashing. You know what each wheel is going over, but it's telling you rather than sticking your nose in it. Mid corner steering changes don't send the chassis pitching from corner to opposite corner like poorly damped cars of similar size and weight (FWIW, I could swear I saw a piece of paper when I was buying that indicated a 3,129 pound shipping weight, but I can't find it now and now wonder if I was imagining it). It just never feels bad or wrong. Always feels good or better. Looking forward to time and opportunity on some back roads with dry pavement (and hopefully >55º).

The car has still only seen wet pavement. While it hasn't been cold the past few days, Goodyear F1s in the wet below 55º are what they are. The cooler it's been the easier it's been to light them up. The car has some wheel hop in the wet even with traction control on. The wheel hop reminds me a lot of the RX-8, but on the other end. And less avoidable. I'm being really gentle with the right pedal because I want to be overly cautious with the torque steer, but this is something else.

Something of significant note (seriously, I marked it three times in my notes and nothing else was marked more than once) is the minimum turn radius. Everything is great until you're parking. Ugh. Every print and online review mentions it, but they do not come close to adequately conveying just how awful it is in practice.

Steering feel is something I can't comment on very deeply. It's superbly weighted, but I'm not sure about feel itself. I don't have any notes on it and as I sit here writing this, I can't really remember anything positive or negative. Part of it may be from not having done any real driving in it, but whatever.

Inside It and Stuff

The steering wheel itself, OTOH, feels great. Kinda like the sorta fuzzy alcantara wheel in the ZHP, but not quite…and not quite in a good way. To look at the wheel, it looks nice, but the feel doesn't match. Again, it's a good thing. The end result is that the wheel looks great and feels even better. Hopefully it holds up over time. The same material covers much of the shifter and it's nice there, too. The shifter's shape is comfortable and feels good.

Buttons Buttons Everywhere on the Wheel

Now, while the steering wheel feels great, it's got a lot of buttons. 20 of them. On the left spoke is a 5 button directional array that mostly operated the MFD between the tach and speedo. On the right spoke is another 5 button directional array that is mostly audio related. Below the right spoke is a 5 button cluster that does something with your phone, voice control and unknown other stuff. Below the left spoke is a 4 button cluster for the cruise control. The 20th button is the horn. Oh yeah, the horn. Stupid weak ass high pitched horn.

The buttons are also on the wrong sides of where I'd like them. Pretty sure I'll get used to it, but I'd prefer the audio controls on the left and the MFD on the right. This all starts bleeding into MyFord Touch and Sync issues, but that has to be a topic for another thread. I still don't understand it and I can't figure out if I have the latest version (3.5.1) or not. Anyway, more later.

Generally, the interior materials look and feel of medium/high quality or better. Most everything you normal touch is soft touch. The controls, buttons and switchgear all operate smoothly and feel pretty high quality. Except the buttons that control the interior light brightness. I don't remember ever driving a car that used buttons to step through brightness levels as opposed to something that you turned or rolled. Oh, this reminds me…

Mood Lighting Up In Here

The mood lighting. On the overhead console, there is a button to cycle through the available mood lighting colors. I was kind of disappointed that there aren't as many colors to choose from as the IUP on the Mustang, but there are a few. I find it odd that they have similar colors scattered, so you may go from one shade of blue to one shade or red to another shade of blue, etc. instead of cycling through in a more color wheel like manner. The colored lights are in the doors, the console, cupholders, footwells, etc. Why I was reminded of all this…there is a knob to control the brightness of these LED lights. There is an off setting and then an adjustment range. I'm not sure why there is an adjustment range with a knob as there is very little difference between the darkest and brightest settings. Anyway… Whatever color you set the lights to, the ones in the door change to red when you open a door. This ambiance or mood lighting stuff seems to be big with the modder kids, so I guess it's going to be in a car like this. Not something I mind, but not something I'd want to pay extra for (included in 202A/ST3).

The seats are the killer app in the interior on the 201A and 202A cars. The leather is somewhere between soft and hard, but feels nice. Looking at it in certain light, I wonder how well it will hold up long term as it looks like it could be prone to cracking. The massive bolsters force you to rub against them on ingress/egress more than in most cars. That won't help.

Sitting in these things, though, is friggin awesome. It would be nice if there was adjustable lumbar for someone with a back like mine (someone put up a detailed how-to as it's an option in Europe and the parts are obtainable…but again, those Stock class rules). It would also be nice if the headrest was adjustable for more than up/down, but it's okay for street driving. It will have to come out and be flipped backwards when wearing a helmet, though. Unfortunately, the button to press to unlock it to adjust/remove it is difficult to get a finger on because it's right up against some bolstering. I wonder why they didn't put it on the other side of the pole?

I would not recommend these seats for anyone with mobility problems. When my parents visit, my mother will not get a ride.

I thought both seats were powered. I was wrong. Driver only.

Visibility forward is pretty good. The A pillars are not the monsters they are in many other cars of recent vintage and that's refreshing. Looking over the shoulder to the back…visibility is not great. It's not terrible, but it's constricted. The rear headrests eat up a lot of what there is of the rear view, too.

The tach, speedo and auxiliary gauges look very pretty, but I keep finding myself looking for a digital speed indicator. big numbers somewhere. Never thought I'd say that. (It's not even displayed on the nav or anywhere on the MFT screen. More in an MFT post sometime.) The font on the speed is so crowded that you kinda have to work a little bit to see what the speedo reads. I've only driven a few cars where I found myself giving it this much thought.

Inside the center armrest is an SD card slot that is always used by the nav if you have nav. Otherwise, you can stick in an SD card with music. There are two powered USB ports and RCA jacks for right and left audio and video. Interesting to note that there is no gap in the arm rest/lid, so if you plug something in and close the armrest back up, you will pinch the cable.

Just behind the shifter is the 12V power port. There is nothing good to say about this location. Just about anything you plug in will get in the way of normal functions while you're driving.

The stereo is supposed to be premium of some kind. Even to my know-nothing ears, it doesn't sound all that great. It would certainly not meet with the Stuka, Nick, or rumatt seals of approval. I'm okay with it, but it doesn't take much in this area to satisfy me.

My biggest gripe with the interior is that I'm having a real difficult time figuring out where to mount the radar detector. Remember from the other thread that I want it somewhere where I don't have to always mount/unmount it. I want to be able to leave it and be reasonably sure it won't be visible from the outside. I bought a Blendmount to put it under the mirror. It's a workable location while driving, but it's way too visible there. I am not sure what I'm going to do. Until I figure this out, I an't run it on the dash and plug it into the 12V port because the cord will interfere too much with the shifter. Kinda bummed that I still haven't been able to try this thing out.

I may be very late to this kind of party, but getting used to fob only, no key stuff takes effort to get comfortable with. It works well, though.

A few more random thoughts in case you're still here:

The upper outer corners of the side mirrors have tow mirror like sections for those that don't know how to adjust their mirrors properly. Adjusting them properly lets you get a better view of traffic two lanes over. And that's nice. I guess.
When the lights are on, another light in the headlight assembly turns on with just a bit of steering angle. Poor man's adaptive lighting, I suppose. Kind of bizarre, actually.
My wife said the LEDs above the HIDs make it look the car has angry eyes.
The "hood gap" issue I've mentioned people being so up in arms about? The stoppers/bumpers the front of the hood rests on are very adjustable. You can make it whatever you want in no time. Not sure if it holds up over time or if they rotate in use. We'll find out.
The rear window does not immediately get covered with crap every time there is moisture on the road like every other single hatch I've ever driven.
The "Sound Symposer" thing works pretty well. Makes this four banger sound good.
General fit and finish may be better than what you expect from Ford, but it's no match for the Germans.
Paint seems good. Didn't find any orange peel or runs like has been reported by some.

BahnBaum · 01-15-2013, 07:34 AM

Next photo trip you drive.

Looks like your wait was worth it. Congrats! I'm looking forward to hearing more.

Alex

lemming · 01-15-2013, 08:31 AM

holy awesome, batman!

love it and thank you for such an extended review!

blee · 01-15-2013, 08:59 AM

Nice. My SVT Focus was one of those cars where you felt like everything was there except for the power. I would be willing to take some torque steer in exchange for the mill in this sucker. And even though it was dated when it was new, I always thought the Focus was a good compact platform. Sounds like the new (but not new, but new anyway) platform keeps that going.

JST · 01-15-2013, 09:18 AM

Now we know why there's such a gap between Clyde's car purchases. It takes a while to write that much.

Seriously, nice write up. Sucks about the throttle pedal; that would drive me batshit.

bren · 01-15-2013, 09:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JST

Sucks about the torque steer; that would drive me batshit.

TD · 01-15-2013, 09:50 AM

I think I'm with bren on this one.

After my recent test drive in a more modestly powered VW GTI, I realized I no longer have any tolerance for torque steer.

Still, great write-up, clyde. And it does look to be an awesome car (torque steer aside).

John V · 01-15-2013, 09:53 AM

You get used to the torque steer. It is, for me, the least objectionable of the various issues I have with the Mazdaspeed3.

*clyde* · 01-15-2013, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John V

You get used to the torque steer. It is, for me, the least objectionable of the various issues I have with the Mazdaspeed3.

Yeah, while there is a lot torque steer in this car, it's not really a big deal in a negative way. I'm not sure what it is, but it makes regular every day stuff a little more exciting...but, of course, that's not necessarily a good thing, either. Still, it's involving and not annoying.

Looking back to my initial thoughts after doing the event at FedEx in July, I said there wasn't much torque steer. I wonder why that is.

Maybe charging ahead that strongly got into the nannies more than we thought which then cut enough power that the torque steer wasn't so bad? Not into the power long enough to experience its full effect? Having the wheel turned at least a little bit at all times worked with the torque compensation system in some way to actually reduce it and the thing doesn't work as well in a straight line?

Maybe were just so focused on other things we didn't notice? Or, what if the pre-production cars had something else going on?

*clyde* · 01-15-2013, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TD

I think I'm with bren on this one.

After my recent test drive in a more modestly powered VW GTI, I realized I no longer have any tolerance for torque steer.

Still, great write-up, clyde. And it does look to be an awesome car (torque steer aside).

It looks like you've already made your decision, but let me know if you want to give it a spin. Happy to swing by your place tonight, tomorrow or sometime this weekend.

01-15-2013, 12:20 AM	#1
clyde Chief title editor Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 26,599	Focus ST (or, Clyde shit and got off the pot) Some of you may remember my Ford GT write up a few years ago. This ain't that. This is kinda like a lupinsea post with less photos. It's one thing to hop in a car, get the seat adjusted and go attack some cones. It's another to live with it (after the epic hemming, hewing, and waiting). I'm at about the 72 hour mark of living with it and have driven about 150 miles. Driving it has been fun. Getting to know MyFord Touch and Sync has been less fun, but that will need it's own thread at some point. It doesn't seem as awful as some make it out to be, but it is so thoroughly interwoven into operating the car, if you have problems with it, you're pretty much doomed. Driving It Starting with the hard traditional bits, it's mostly pretty cool. It never feels slow or like it's lacking for power, regardless of where it is in the rev range. Fifth and sixth gears are, well, fifth and sixth gears in a boosted little banger, so plan accordingly. Power delivery is very smooth. There may be some turbo lag, but it blends is smoothly that it may not be worth finishing this paragr… Everything I've read has said what a great job Ford's torque compensating system does. if that's true, I'm not sure I'd want to drive the car without it. Stomping on it in third gear from 60 mph puts you in another lane at 80 mph faster than you can think "no fucking way." It's not violent torque steer, but it's very strong. And it's present just about everywhere where the fun needle is in motion. There are some tunes available that bring power up a good bit under the curve. I don't know if I'm going to go that route. Need to decide whether I'm going to autocross it and how anything I do to it might affect where I can run it legally. It's kind of hard to talk much about the transmission. The kind of driving and weather here has limited what I can do. No hard shifting yet, so I haven't had the pleasure of the 1-2 BANG from the engine rolling around almost unconstrained by some reportedly very soft motor mounts. The shifter may be the most unpleasant physical feeling item in the car. While it's precise and generally feels okay, there's sometimes a kind of rubbery feeling to it that I don't remember ever feeling in other cars. It's as if some of the bushings are just a tiny fraction too small and or their contact edges are just a little softer than the rest of the rest and it allows the slightest bit of vibration. Sometimes. There is at least one shifter bushing kit out there. If it's legal for where I might run the car, I'll do it, else live with it. When you shift, sometimes you shift down…or downshift. And when you downshift you like to heel-toe. Well, in other cars you do. Can't do it in this car. This is the only "How the hell did they get this SO fucking wrong?" problem with the car I can see so far. Roll your foot over off the brake and it doesn't come anywhere close to the gas pedal. Even a proper traditional heel-toe is just barely doable with lots of concentration. It's a seriously sour point. Someone figured out a 5 minute, $5 way to add some shims to raise the gas pedal, but it involves drilling which may make it a no-no for stock even if the shims are removed for use. If there is no way to adjust the pedal on its own, I'm not sure what I'll do to address it. Not being able to heel-toe on an autocross course is livable. Not being able to do it on the street is not. This is the one absolutely-must-fix problem with the car. I haven't had the chance to do any really spirited driving, so I'll fall back to my comments in July about driving the pre-production car. For regular city/suburban driving, the chassis is very well tuned. Patches of broken pavement are swallowed with well controlled motions and a near total lack of crashing. You know what each wheel is going over, but it's telling you rather than sticking your nose in it. Mid corner steering changes don't send the chassis pitching from corner to opposite corner like poorly damped cars of similar size and weight (FWIW, I could swear I saw a piece of paper when I was buying that indicated a 3,129 pound shipping weight, but I can't find it now and now wonder if I was imagining it). It just never feels bad or wrong. Always feels good or better. Looking forward to time and opportunity on some back roads with dry pavement (and hopefully >55º). The car has still only seen wet pavement. While it hasn't been cold the past few days, Goodyear F1s in the wet below 55º are what they are. The cooler it's been the easier it's been to light them up. The car has some wheel hop in the wet even with traction control on. The wheel hop reminds me a lot of the RX-8, but on the other end. And less avoidable. I'm being really gentle with the right pedal because I want to be overly cautious with the torque steer, but this is something else. Something of significant note (seriously, I marked it three times in my notes and nothing else was marked more than once) is the minimum turn radius. Everything is great until you're parking. Ugh. Every print and online review mentions it, but they do not come close to adequately conveying just how awful it is in practice. Steering feel is something I can't comment on very deeply. It's superbly weighted, but I'm not sure about feel itself. I don't have any notes on it and as I sit here writing this, I can't really remember anything positive or negative. Part of it may be from not having done any real driving in it, but whatever. Inside It and Stuff The steering wheel itself, OTOH, feels great. Kinda like the sorta fuzzy alcantara wheel in the ZHP, but not quite…and not quite in a good way. To look at the wheel, it looks nice, but the feel doesn't match. Again, it's a good thing. The end result is that the wheel looks great and feels even better. Hopefully it holds up over time. The same material covers much of the shifter and it's nice there, too. The shifter's shape is comfortable and feels good. Buttons Buttons Everywhere on the Wheel Now, while the steering wheel feels great, it's got a lot of buttons. 20 of them. On the left spoke is a 5 button directional array that mostly operated the MFD between the tach and speedo. On the right spoke is another 5 button directional array that is mostly audio related. Below the right spoke is a 5 button cluster that does something with your phone, voice control and unknown other stuff. Below the left spoke is a 4 button cluster for the cruise control. The 20th button is the horn. Oh yeah, the horn. Stupid weak ass high pitched horn. The buttons are also on the wrong sides of where I'd like them. Pretty sure I'll get used to it, but I'd prefer the audio controls on the left and the MFD on the right. This all starts bleeding into MyFord Touch and Sync issues, but that has to be a topic for another thread. I still don't understand it and I can't figure out if I have the latest version (3.5.1) or not. Anyway, more later. Generally, the interior materials look and feel of medium/high quality or better. Most everything you normal touch is soft touch. The controls, buttons and switchgear all operate smoothly and feel pretty high quality. Except the buttons that control the interior light brightness. I don't remember ever driving a car that used buttons to step through brightness levels as opposed to something that you turned or rolled. Oh, this reminds me… Mood Lighting Up In Here The mood lighting. On the overhead console, there is a button to cycle through the available mood lighting colors. I was kind of disappointed that there aren't as many colors to choose from as the IUP on the Mustang, but there are a few. I find it odd that they have similar colors scattered, so you may go from one shade of blue to one shade or red to another shade of blue, etc. instead of cycling through in a more color wheel like manner. The colored lights are in the doors, the console, cupholders, footwells, etc. Why I was reminded of all this…there is a knob to control the brightness of these LED lights. There is an off setting and then an adjustment range. I'm not sure why there is an adjustment range with a knob as there is very little difference between the darkest and brightest settings. Anyway… Whatever color you set the lights to, the ones in the door change to red when you open a door. This ambiance or mood lighting stuff seems to be big with the modder kids, so I guess it's going to be in a car like this. Not something I mind, but not something I'd want to pay extra for (included in 202A/ST3). The seats are the killer app in the interior on the 201A and 202A cars. The leather is somewhere between soft and hard, but feels nice. Looking at it in certain light, I wonder how well it will hold up long term as it looks like it could be prone to cracking. The massive bolsters force you to rub against them on ingress/egress more than in most cars. That won't help. Sitting in these things, though, is friggin awesome. It would be nice if there was adjustable lumbar for someone with a back like mine (someone put up a detailed how-to as it's an option in Europe and the parts are obtainable…but again, those Stock class rules). It would also be nice if the headrest was adjustable for more than up/down, but it's okay for street driving. It will have to come out and be flipped backwards when wearing a helmet, though. Unfortunately, the button to press to unlock it to adjust/remove it is difficult to get a finger on because it's right up against some bolstering. I wonder why they didn't put it on the other side of the pole? I would not recommend these seats for anyone with mobility problems. When my parents visit, my mother will not get a ride. I thought both seats were powered. I was wrong. Driver only. Visibility forward is pretty good. The A pillars are not the monsters they are in many other cars of recent vintage and that's refreshing. Looking over the shoulder to the back…visibility is not great. It's not terrible, but it's constricted. The rear headrests eat up a lot of what there is of the rear view, too. The tach, speedo and auxiliary gauges look very pretty, but I keep finding myself looking for a digital speed indicator. big numbers somewhere. Never thought I'd say that. (It's not even displayed on the nav or anywhere on the MFT screen. More in an MFT post sometime.) The font on the speed is so crowded that you kinda have to work a little bit to see what the speedo reads. I've only driven a few cars where I found myself giving it this much thought. Inside the center armrest is an SD card slot that is always used by the nav if you have nav. Otherwise, you can stick in an SD card with music. There are two powered USB ports and RCA jacks for right and left audio and video. Interesting to note that there is no gap in the arm rest/lid, so if you plug something in and close the armrest back up, you will pinch the cable. Just behind the shifter is the 12V power port. There is nothing good to say about this location. Just about anything you plug in will get in the way of normal functions while you're driving. The stereo is supposed to be premium of some kind. Even to my know-nothing ears, it doesn't sound all that great. It would certainly not meet with the Stuka, Nick, or rumatt seals of approval. I'm okay with it, but it doesn't take much in this area to satisfy me. My biggest gripe with the interior is that I'm having a real difficult time figuring out where to mount the radar detector. Remember from the other thread that I want it somewhere where I don't have to always mount/unmount it. I want to be able to leave it and be reasonably sure it won't be visible from the outside. I bought a Blendmount to put it under the mirror. It's a workable location while driving, but it's way too visible there. I am not sure what I'm going to do. Until I figure this out, I an't run it on the dash and plug it into the 12V port because the cord will interfere too much with the shifter. Kinda bummed that I still haven't been able to try this thing out. I may be very late to this kind of party, but getting used to fob only, no key stuff takes effort to get comfortable with. It works well, though. A few more random thoughts in case you're still here: The upper outer corners of the side mirrors have tow mirror like sections for those that don't know how to adjust their mirrors properly. Adjusting them properly lets you get a better view of traffic two lanes over. And that's nice. I guess. When the lights are on, another light in the headlight assembly turns on with just a bit of steering angle. Poor man's adaptive lighting, I suppose. Kind of bizarre, actually. My wife said the LEDs above the HIDs make it look the car has angry eyes. The "hood gap" issue I've mentioned people being so up in arms about? The stoppers/bumpers the front of the hood rests on are very adjustable. You can make it whatever you want in no time. Not sure if it holds up over time or if they rotate in use. We'll find out. The rear window does not immediately get covered with crap every time there is moisture on the road like every other single hatch I've ever driven. The "Sound Symposer" thing works pretty well. Makes this four banger sound good. General fit and finish may be better than what you expect from Ford, but it's no match for the Germans. Paint seems good. Didn't find any orange peel or runs like has been reported by some. __________________ OH NOES!!!!!1 MY CAR HAS T3H UND3R5T33R5555!!!!!!1oneone!!!!11 Team WTF?! What are you gonna do?

01-15-2013, 07:34 AM	#2
BahnBaum Tilting Rocinante Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Havre de Grace, MD Posts: 6,244	Next photo trip you drive. Looks like your wait was worth it. Congrats! I'm looking forward to hearing more. Alex __________________

01-15-2013, 08:31 AM	#3
lemming Western Anomaly Join Date: Oct 2003 Carmudgeonly Ride: White Orca Posts: 16,611	holy awesome, batman! love it and thank you for such an extended review! __________________

01-15-2013, 08:59 AM	#4
blee Doctor Mudgeon Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 6,433	Nice. My SVT Focus was one of those cars where you felt like everything was there except for the power. I would be willing to take some torque steer in exchange for the mill in this sucker. And even though it was dated when it was new, I always thought the Focus was a good compact platform. Sounds like the new (but not new, but new anyway) platform keeps that going.

01-15-2013, 09:18 AM	#5
JST 195 Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 24,611	Now we know why there's such a gap between Clyde's car purchases. It takes a while to write that much. Seriously, nice write up. Sucks about the throttle pedal; that would drive me batshit.

01-15-2013, 09:50 AM	#7
TD Founder emeritus Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Maryland Posts: 21,007	I think I'm with bren on this one. After my recent test drive in a more modestly powered VW GTI, I realized I no longer have any tolerance for torque steer. Still, great write-up, clyde. And it does look to be an awesome car (torque steer aside).

01-15-2013, 09:53 AM	#8
John V No more BMWs Join Date: Apr 2005 Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8 Location: Glenwood, MD Posts: 14,753	You get used to the torque steer. It is, for me, the least objectionable of the various issues I have with the Mazdaspeed3.