More than can be said for the daughters in the ‘other’ Focus – hot, frizzy, dishevelled, stiff, a dreadful mess and thoroughly grumpy.
Downsides? After a while you’re reminded that a Focus is not really intended for trans-continental cruising a la BMW 7 series. As a passenger I began to notice that there’s not so much legroom, and pushing the seat back brought howls of protest from the back, where there’s even less. But we were asking an awful lot of a car of this size. Two grown ups and two smallish children would be fine.
More surprising was that in spite of our modest speeds, the Focus only managed 41. 4 mpg, just 0.4 mpg better than its 1.6 litre ancestor which came with us. Course it was carrying lots more weight, and all those comfortable gadgets come at a price in terms of fuel consumed, but it was still a bit disappointing in terms of pence per mile, or cents per kilometre.
But let’s not be churlish. This was a thoroughly competent performance, and even if it did use rather more petrol than I’d hoped, the Focus took us to France and back with great finesse, sang froid, and aplomb.
