A European Sport Sedan—From Ford
 |
| Ford |
Welcome to the wintry top of the 2012 Ford Focus mountain, the fully equipped, massively geared up "Titanium" edition of the all-new compact sedan. This trim package, starting at $22,270, is $6,000 above the Focus S sedan base camp. With its glossy "piano black" plastic inside and out, aluminum wheels, 8-inch navi/audio/climate/phone touch screen, and its frosty overburden of chrome brightwork, things are very shiny at the summit. You'll need your snow goggles. By the way, secretly, your Sherpa hates you.
The Titanium sedan (the available five-door hatch is $495 more) asks you to consider this Aristotelian question: Would you ever want an extravagantly equipped version of a desperately cheap compact? As I read it, the Titanium Focus has the most content of any car at this price point, including rain-sensing wipers; rearview camera/sensing system; leather sport seats with six-way power and lumbar adjustment; and a 10-speaker Sony audio system, among many electronics. This thing is a slagheap of silicon.
Throw a couple thousand more at this car and you'll get a power moon roof; heated seats; voice-activated navigation; a Lexus-like self-parking feature; and a sport wheel-and-suspension package that shreds California back roads like Wolverine going through Arrow shirts. That's a lot of car for around $26,000 and—to my point—arguably better equipped than an entry-level BMW or Infiniti.
But in the end, you're still driving a Ford Focus, a brand and a car that has historically had the glamour of sweaty feet. Few nameplates outside of Amana could be more appliance-like. Ford has sold more than 10 million Focuses globally since 2000.
Here we encounter the tyranny of brand. Would you buy a Timex watch that keeps time better than the atomic clock in Boulder; a Piper Seminole that can break the sound barrier; a bottle of Andre Cold Duck that out-sparkles Dom Pérignon? Would you, in other words, pay less for more?
With the Focus Titanium, maybe you would. And this is the important thing about the car, transcending its fuel economy (figure about 28/38 miles per gallon), or middling 0-60 times (9 seconds). The brand, the meaning of Ford is changing, becoming more elastic on the high end. Bearing in mind that the Blue Oval has always had more cachet overseas than it has had in the U.S., Ford's Q score is wildly up these days. Indeed, compared with Ford, Justin Bieber is just treading water.
For this sudden love, you could credit many things. Consumer affection is in some ways a zero-sum game, and Toyota's loss over the past two years is definitely Ford's gain. Ford was also the only Detroit car maker to avoid a government-funded bankruptcy—winners don't take bailouts, right? You have to send the product planners a case of beer, as well: Ford's embrace of in-cabin information technology, such as its deal with Microsoft (the Sync system), has given the brand a bit of a hipster edge, as has its whole-hog social networking effort. Ford had socially networked brand advocates running around pushing its Fiesta for a year before the car landed Stateside.
With the new Focus Titanium, we are looking at the stirrings of a notion Henry Ford never remotely considered: Ford as an aspirational brand.
And, it has to be said, part of the desirability of the new Focus has to do with it being an undiluted European car. Based on Ford's global C platform (104.3-inch wheelbase), the Focus was largely designed and engineered in Germany, with a powertrain sorted in England (happily, however, the U.S.-spec Focus will be assembled in Michigan). Our previous Focus was basically warmed over for a decade, remedial in power and performance, while the European Focus grew more sophisticated through two full redesigns. No more. According to Ford execs, the new Focus has 80% global commonality, with the balance being on account of market-specific safety and emission standards.
And so, the European styling, the intentional modernism of the shape, wind-curried and tight-drafted, with a great stance for a small car (a half-inch lower and 3 inches longer than the previous car). I appreciate that Ford design didn't attempt to graft on its Gillette razor grille with the multiple blades (cf., Ford Edge and Fusion). Instead, the Focus gets a powerful triptych-trapezoidal grille, which makes the car instantly recognizable at a distance—what designers call "down the road" graphic. For styling rivals, you'd have to look at Euro-only cars like the Citroën C4 or Peugeot 308. Stateside, compared with the Focus, the Chevy Cruze looks like a lump of arterial cholesterol.
The Focus is a seriously nice car on the inside, enough so that Ford engineers and marketers quietly ventured the Audi A3 and A4 as competitor. Talk about hubris. And yet, the Titanium interior is pretty artful, a sinuous composition in soft-touch materials, alloy-like painted trim, textured fabric, that piano-black plastic—assuming your Steinway is made by Mattel—and lots of electrons. The center stack is dominated by the 8-inch touch screen, above a gloss-black panel with the rotary controller for the Sony sound system (there's a smaller LCD between the gauges in the instrument cluster). The leather steering wheel has more buttons than a band uniform, offering triple redundancy for phone and audio. I think. Frankly, it would take more than a day behind the wheel to become fluent in these interfaces.
I was pleased to discover a traditional hand-brake lever to the right of the shift gate. In these uncertain times, you never know when you may have to execute a bootleg turn.
At a press event in Southern California last week, I drove two trim levels: the volume car, the SE ($17,270 MSRP), with optional 17-inch, all-season tires and five-speed manual transmission; and the Titanium sedan, with optional 18-inch summer tires, sport suspension and dual-clutch automatic transmission. In either fitment, the Focus proved to be damn crafty and athletic. The chassis feels hammer-hard and stout, paying dividends in the kind of cabin ambience you might expect in a larger and more expensive car. The ride quality is even and serene even when the asphalt isn't. The Focus's Noise-Vibration-Harshness (NVH) team just murdered it.
Fling the car into the corners and the Focus's handling is yar and well balanced; it's even tossable in a Euro-spec sort of way. The car gathers understeer as steering angles increase—it pushes like a front-drive car will, in other words, with an increasing bleating from the front tires. But transitional, corner-to-corner manners are solid and reassuring, and the electric power steering direct, linear and reasonably communicative.
The string-back glove set will appreciate the torque-vectoring system built into the front axle. Much like a mechanical limited-slip differential, torque vectoring subtly pulses the brake of the inside front wheel in a corner, directing more torque to the outside wheel, actually helping bend the car into a corner. Once there, you can go to the whip harder and sooner. Combined with the Titanium's optional 18-inch summer rubber and leaner sport suspension, the torque vectoring turns a fairly good front-driver into a fervid and stubborn little gymkhana car.
If only, alas, there was more torque to vector. The Ford chassis engineers have so outclassed the powertrain—a 2.0-liter, direct-injection four-banger with 160 horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque, and that at a cringe-y 4,450 rpm—that you can't help but walk away feeling that the car is woefully underpowered. When was a sport hatch slower to 60 than 9 seconds, after all? You may wish the manual tranny had a sixth gear or that there were steering wheel-mounted paddle shifters for the six-speed, dual-clutch automatic. The little Up/Down button on the shifter is worthless. You may tire of having to kick this thing like it's a lazy court jester to get it to move. One way or another, driving enthusiasts are likely to feel unrequited by the powertrain.
The good news is that Ford will soon offer an engine worthy of the chassis, a 250-hp turbocharged four-cylinder in a performance variant called the ST. Until then, for me, the Titanium feels a little like fool's gold.
But man, Ford sure looks like the smartest kid in class these days. And I relish the notion that the Focus, of all cars, could nip at the heels of Audi and Acura. Really. Go tell it on the mountain.
Corrections & Amplifications
The 2012 Ford Focus is available with a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. An earlier version of this column incorrectly said the manual transmission was a six-speed.
MORE IN AUTOS
2012 Ford Focus Titanium Sedan
Base price: $22,270
Price as tested: $26,075
Powertrain: Direct-injection 2.0-liter, DOHC, 16-valve in-line four-cylinder engine with variable valve timing; six-speed dual-clutch auto-shift transmission; front-wheel drive with electronic limited-slip differential.
Horsepower/torque: 160 hp @ 6,500 rpm/146 pound-feet at 4,450 rpm
Curb weight/length: 3,015 pounds/178.5 inches
0-60 mph: 9 seconds (est.)
Wheelbase: 104.3 inches
EPA fuel economy: 28/38 mpg, city/highway (est.)
Cargo capacity: 13.2 cubic feet
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703445904576118111826545354.html?mod=WSJ_Autos_LS_Autos_4
No comments:
Post a Comment