PH Blog: It's time to focus on the triple
Why a 1.0-litre Ford Focus restores Riggers' faith in the future of fun motoring
Think Prius, Honda Insight, or any number of hair-shirt diesels on rock-hard tyres and with power deliveries full of holes and you'll see what I mean. Even the engineer's wet dream that is the Chevrolet volt/Vauxhall Ampera range-extender isn't going to tug at the heart strings of the driving enthusiast.
But I have just driven the car that might well be the saviour of interesting cars. It is, of all things, a Ford Focus with a 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine.
Yes, I know it sounds weird, maybe even a bit wrong. But we who tap away at keyboards and talk about cars for a living have been banging on for ages now about how downsized turbocharged motors are the future of mainstream internal combustion-engined cars for years now, and yet the products have never quite lived up to our expectations of them. They've always over-promised and under-delivered, with too much in the way of fuel consumption and not enough in the way of actual grunt.
Until now.
I don't know what kind of voodoo the Ford folks at Dunton and Dagenham (and the various other Brit technology partners involved in the project) have invoked to create this machine, but it's clearly strong stuff. Because this really, genuinely, honestly, is a car with the economy of 1.0-litre engine (because it is one), and the power of a naturally aspirated 1.6.
Except it's better than that. I only had the opportunity to test the 100hp version - there's a 125hp version too - but even in its most lowly guise it feels a world away from the 1.6-litre Focuses I remember driving in the past. Mid-spec petrol-engined C segment cars that have become asthmatic, their bodies too bloated for their powerplants to cope. The 1.0-litre Ecoboost triple wipes that away in a stroke.
It feels strong all the way through the rev range, it's impressively quiet (you can hear the three-cylinder thrum and the whoosh-swish of the turbo with the window open, but window-up it's near-inaudible) and it returns genuinely decent economy - 58.9mpg on the combined cycle.
Buyers seem to be falling for it, too; it accounted for 17 per cent of total Focus sales in April, and Ford people are quietly whispering that it could take up to 25 per cent of the family car's sales.
Most important, though, is that it makes the Focus fun again - the trick that made the first-generation car such a charmer. I'd love to try the 125hp version in a Fiesta. It would most likely be a proper hoot.
Riggers
But the combined cycle, as in the official EU figure, although admittedly not a real-world figure, is still a good yardstick for comparing with other cars, because it is a genuine like-for-like comparison. So for example the 105hp 1.6 Focus returns 47.9mpg on the combined cycle.
I'm sure that in everyday mixed driving you'd actually get somewhere in the mid-to-high 40s, but a 1.6 would be more like high 30s. Also - and this is really my main point - you'll enjoy yourself more in the 1.0-litre car.
But the combined cycle, as in the official EU figure, although admittedly not a real-world figure, is still a good yardstick for comparing with other cars, because it is a genuine like-for-like comparison. So for example the 105hp 1.6 Focus returns 47.9mpg on the combined cycle.
I'm sure that in everyday mixed driving you'd actually get somewhere in the mid-to-high 40s, but a 1.6 would be more like high 30s. Also - and this is really my main point - you'll enjoy yourself more in the 1.0-litre car.
Having said that, the compactness and lightness of this engine are very attractive, now to build a car that fully exploits these virtues. An Elise- or Smart Roadster-alike with this lump would be really rather nice.
Regardless of well documented problems with DPF and related gubbins, the diesel market is still too strong.
I do hope I'm wrong.
In regards to reliability, no reason why this car won't last for 150K or more. It's all about how the end user treats the car or if there is an inherent design flaw with the engine. I'm trusting Ford to have covered every angle with this engine.
Still; if it makes these big, ugly slug-mobiles fun to drive, at least that's something. How about some EPS with some feel dialled-in and a bit of RWS throttle-steer, just to complete the picture of how good some boring hatchbacks used to be?
I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but I believe that it will return mid 30's max in normal out of town driving (the sort I do driving in rural Suffolk) rather than the pie in the sky VOSA figures (but then its a level playing field for all manufacturers)
Remember the Prius vs M3 on Top Gear; yes staged I know, but it makes the point that a small engine worked very hard will use a similar amount of fuel to an unstressed larger engine in the same road conditions.
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