11th Jan 2020, 07:31
Disagree with the comment about Hondas and Toyotas: ALL my Hondas & Toyotas have gone OVER 200K miles, with few repairs. My Fords all start breaking at 90K.
12th Jan 2020, 18:18
Maybe in America indeed. Car quality varies worldwide, even from the same manufacturer, and even the same model sometimes! I believe it is due to certain cars being built in different factories. For example, I live in the UK and have had about 4 perfectly reliable Ford Mondeos since the 1990s, great cars. A similar Ford Contour in the USA only gets an average review in regards to reliability. Same for VW - I have also had a couple of reliable VW Passats, but you guys in the USA seem to get unreliable ones according to some reviews on here.
11th Jan 2013, 18:44
I ended up trading this car in Jan 2011 for an '08 Camry LE 5-speed. Bad move. For the Focus' many faults, it's a fun to drive car in need of 50 more horsepower. When I traded the Focus, I found out that the brake pads (which were new when I bought it) were down to nothing and the rear tires (with 20K miles, mostly highway) were not passing inspection. After I wrote this review, I had to dump a ton more money into the car, it was like another $200 fix every few weeks. Disappointing; it was sharp-looking, and like I said, it drove pretty nicely.
As for the Camry, traded that too. Water pump went bad at 28K miles (common fault on the 4-cylinders) and it felt like a 5/8 scale Town Car with a balky transmission and a sloppy clutch.
Now in an '04 Mustang GT. Much better.
I'm considering an '08-'10 Focus when the prices come down a little more. All of the problems of the earlier cars were solved; the later ones are much more reliable.