Faults:

Rear seat back catch is temperamental.

Deformed rear tyres causing a droning sound. Went away when replaced, but how did they get like that?

General Comments:

Excellent value for money. £5k for a cutting edge family hatch which, if you believe the reviews, still has no peers when it comes to driver satisfaction. I don't know about that, but it does have a pleasingly "sharp" feel with a great ride, lovely weighty steering and powerful brakes.

The budget wouldn't stretch to one of the excellent TDCi engines, so I had to make do with the old Endura DI unit which has to be the car's biggest weakness. To be fair, the engine actually performs quite well and has a nice, easy going nature to its power delivery. Unfortunately, it's gruff, rumbly and smokes like an old boiler when you accelerate hard.

Economy so far has varied quite drastically. We've seen everything from a very impressive 54 mpg, to a petrol rivalling 36 mpg. Average is around 46 mpg which is a good 10mpg more than you'd ever get from the 1600 petrol version. Running costs generally are low too with original Ford parts prices costing less than my previous Nissan's pattern parts.

Reliability is good so far. The seat catch needs a bit of fiddling to get it to latch after the seats have been folded, and something odd happened to the rear tyres which became "stepped" on their inner edges with a good 4mm of wear left on the remainder. I'm told this is not uncommon on the Focus, and yes the car was HPI'd before I bought it.

I know from friends that Ford dealers are useless, so I do basic servicing myself, and have any additional work carried out by an independent who has been known to our family for years. He does a good job and charges a fair price.

Overall I would say a 4yr old Focus is probably the best age/value/ability combination available in family motoring today. If it continues as it has started, I will be overjoyed.

Faults:

The day that I purchased the car, I was stopped by the police and told to park the car and given a citation, due to having absolutely no lights, head lights, rear lights, park lights, stop lights, all out. I took the car to the dealership the next day and I had no car for about 2-weeks because they could not figure out what was wrong, finally after asking for a loaner car, they fixed my car.

I started having trouble with my front brakes and rotors soon after the warranty ran out, and I have replaced both the front and back brakes several times along with the rotors problem still exists.

I have replaced the battery.

I have had to replace the EGR Tube which was very expensive.

I have had to replace the ignition coil which was very expensive.

The last, but not lease problem, I thought that my starter went out about 2-weeks ago and I had the car towed home and bought a starter for 169.00 none refundable, paid to have the starter put on and guess what, car still did not start, I had the car towed to the Company, put on diagnostic machine for 78.00 only to find out that my motor is gone and it will cost me 4,800 to replace the motor, so now I have two choices, I either replace that motor or I get a new car and start all over again with the same dealer and loose all of my previous payments.

General Comments:

I would not recommend this particular car to anyone, not even my worst enemy.

I really loved this car at first and would have recommended it to anyone, but after all the problems this car has given me I would never suggest to anyone to get this car.

I feel like Ford really need to compensate anyone who has had a car that has constantly given them problems.

I really feel that if a car only has 50,000 mile on it and the motor blows up for no apparent reason that even their technician can't figure out, They need to put the owner in another car and at lease let them continue paying for the point of their car going out.

Ford need to take the Ford Focus off the market until they can figure out why the motors dont last past 40,000 or 50,000 miles, because a car is a huge investment and should not be taken lightly