2002 Ford Focus 1.8 TDCi turbo diesel

Summary:

Nice driving car, but unreliable engine

Faults:

- Light bulbs.

- Multi-belt.

- Ball joints front suspension.

- Brake discs front.

- Timing belt.

General Comments:

Nice car to drive, good performance, pleasant design. But in the the 2.5 year period I had the Focus, I was not very lucky. Two times the car left me stranded with broken belts, and the last time - when the timing belt broke, 10.000 km before it should have been replaced, the engine could not be repaired.

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? No

Review Date: 20th September, 2012

21st Sep 2012, 00:10

Can't agree more. All we get in Focus's on this side of the pond are gasoline 2.0 engines. Both of which drop valve seats right at 150k miles. Nice car otherwise (with the stick shifts anyway), but the stupid and insulting valve seat design makes a mockery of otherwise good engineering. Never had a car that treats the customer with such contempt before (my wife's term). Ford wants to save a few dollars on the production line... only to lose customers... for life. What are they thinking about? Dearborn? I don't think so... more like DearGod - what were they thinking?

16th Apr 2013, 06:56

Belts snapping has nothing to do with the reliability of the engine itself. It's obviously a cheaply made belt and snapped prematurely. The engine itself would have been fine for a long time. It's a pity about the corner cutting by Ford where it really mattered.

1999 Ford Focus 1.6

Summary:

Fun to drive, very practical as well

Faults:

I found the vibrating exhaust very irritating. This was caused by small parts in the exhaust, at least that's how my dealer explained this. It couldn't be repaired, but a good slap with a hammer on the exhaust might help. Tried it, it helped, but the noise came back soon. The exhaust was replaced later without costs.

One time my Focus went dead while driving on the highway with about 130 km/h. No lamps, no engine, nothing. I managed to steer to the highway side safely (brakes still worked, as did the steering wheel). I turned the ignition. Nothing, everything dead, no power, nothing. As I'm into computers I realized a real reset might help. So how to do a soft reset with a car? Maybe removing the keys and inserting them again? Yep. That worked. The car never experienced this problem anymore and a couple of months later (!) I received a recall-letter describing this problem - the computer needed a hard-reset to solve this. My dealer had already done exactly that.

No other problems occurred except for the many stones that seem to like the front of the Focus. I never had a car which got hit so many times.

General Comments:

This car is very quick. I'm a go-cart fanatic and the Focus Trend is quite close to go-carting. You can do almost anything with it. It's definitely fun to drive a Focus. And it's the first car I ever had which did not only just reach the printed maximum speed (185 km/h) but exceeded it quite a lot (210 km/h without any tuning!).

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Don't Know

Review Date: 22nd December, 2002

1999 Ford Focus Trend 1.8 ZETEC

Faults:

Central lock remote replaced.

Leakage of windowcleaner fluid.

Sometimes motor shuts down without a clear reason (not solved yet, probably electrical problem).

General Comments:

Car sticks on the road real good.

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Don't Know

Review Date: 25th March, 2000