2021 Ford Focus vs 2023 Cupra Formentor

What's the difference?

Ten years ago, the idea that the higher-riding version of a hatchback would be a good city car would have been laughable. The Focus Active is pitched as a kind of SUV with its different low-grip driving modes, which you'll never touch if you stick to the city.

The Ford Focus is genuinely a brilliant car, no matter where you take it. The Active takes a terrific chassis, tweaks it for comfort but, ironically, doesn't lose much of the speed.

I am stuck in two minds on the Formentor VZe, a car which took me by surprise. It's a bit frustrating as a plug-in hybrid. It has a short real-world electric-only range and takes a while to charge. While this isn't unusual for a small PHEV, I wish it were better on this front. As a hybrid crossover, though, it is intriguing - a rare case of an electrified car being seriously fun to drive and proving that hybrids don't just have to be about saving fuel. If only it didn't cost almost as much as a Golf R...

For a fairly conservative hatchback, the Focus came under fire for what some termed its derivative styling. I quite like it, and not just because the styling work was led by an Australian. The front end is very much family Ford, as long as it's the European arm of the family, fitting in with its smaller sibling, the Fiesta. The Active scores the usual black cladding, higher ride height and smaller diameter wheels, in exchange for more compliant, higher-profile tyres. All of that takes nothing away from a design that I think looks pretty good.

The cabin is well put together, with just that oddly angled touchscreen causing me a bit of a twitch. The design is a fairly steady Ford interior with a lot of switchgear shared with the Fiesta, but it's all quite nice. The materials feel mostly pleasant  and the hardwearing fabric on the seats feels right for this kind of car.

The Formentor looks great. It’s much more a crossover hatch than it is an SUV, and one of the better looking examples on the market, too.

It’s a surprising take on the Volkswagen Group SUV formula, too, given it could have easily been a re-skinned, or worse, re-badged T-Roc. Instead the Formentor brings a quite unique look and feel to what are otherwise commonly shared parts.

The light profile is distinctive, as are the chunky, almost Porsche-style haunches over the rear wheels. The wheels themselves, despite measuring in at just 18-inches appear enormous on this design, and completing its contemporary visage are the contrast grey crossover highlights over the wheels and a contemporary light-bar running across the rear.

This car brings all the elements it needs to stand out and apart from its peers. It’s striking, cool, and aggressive, and with its signature light profile, it looks all the more menacing at night.

The interior is also interesting. The big bucket seats in the front instantly imbue it with a sporty feel, as does the neat steering wheel with a carbon-look finish and the raised centre console elements shared with the Golf 8.

The mix of manual adjust seats, modern fly-by-wire controls, and digital dash set-up makes the Cupra feel like it’s in an unusual, very European trim level, the kind you don’t usually see in Australia, and while all the individual pieces come from across the VW Group - from Skoda to Audi, the way they’ve been mixed and matched in this car gives the Formentor its own distinctive appeal.

This is helped along by a bespoke set of typefaces and designs for this car’s digital elements, on the multimedia screen and dash display. There’s been attention to detail here in setting the Cupra brand apart, and I appreciate the depth of changes this car has compared to, say, a Golf, or a T-Roc.

The Focus is quite roomy compared to other cars in its class. The rear seat has good leg and headroom, with the feeling of space accentuated by large windows. Annoyingly, though, all that work put into making the rear a nice place to be is ruined by a lack of amenities like cupholders, USB ports or an armrest. 

Front-seat passengers fare better with two cupholders, a roomy space at the base of the console for a phone and a wireless-charging pad. The front seats are very comfortable, too.

The boot starts at a fairly average 375 litres - clearly sacrificed for rear-seat space - and maxes out at 1320 litres with the seats down. While you have to lift things over the loading lip and down into the boot, it's one of the more sensibly shaped load areas, with straight up and down sides. Ironically, the smaller Puma has a noticeably larger boot.

The design sells a car which is more individualistic than some of its rivals or relations, and this certainly felt true in my week with this Cupra. The big front seats, for example, are accommodating and supporting, allowing a sporty, low seating position and a good level of adjustability for the steering column.

The doors have a big bottle holder in them, and there are a further two in the raised centre console element. This area is also enhanced with a small bay thanks to the minimalist fly-by-wire controls, good for holding another phone, wallet, or perhaps keys. There is also an adjustable-height centre armrest covering a small storage box.

The area under the screen hosts dual USB-C ports as well as a wireless charger. Although we’ll call out here there’s no mechanical controls for the climate functions, which like all modern VW Group vehicles, need to be managed through some touch elements below the multimedia screen, or, more frustratingly, through the screen itself.

The screen is interesting, because it’s not one of the crazy high resolution ones which appear in some VW Group products, instead being a faster, lower resolution version, which has the benefit of making the touch elements in CarPlay or some of the sub menus large and easy to jab at while on the move.

The software is mostly good, too, with a handful of fairly self-explanatory menus, with some more advanced features buried about two menus deep, best adjusted while parked. There’s a clever little short-cut bar on the left-hand side of the screen, even when CarPlay is running, which lets you skip right to the main menu, car settings, or climate functions.

The digital dash has a welcome variety of views to play with to suit all kinds of preferences, and some bespoke Cupra ones which look neat, too.

In my week with the car, I had some passengers complain that the rear seats feel very claustrophobic with the massive front seat backs blocking the view out the front of the car, and a combination of black headliner and a large transmission tunnel closing in the space further.

I tend to agree, although I (at 182cm) had sufficient airspace for my knees behind my own driving position as well as sufficient headroom, with the only small annoyance being how low the doorline is. If you’re as tall or taller you’ll need to duck low to get in.

Welcome additions to the second row include a large bottle holder in each of the doors, dual USB-C outlets, and the third climate zone with adjustable vents is a real win.

Boot space is 345 litres. Sounds middling for the small SUV segment, and down on the 420 litres offered in the purely combustion variants, but I was pleased to find it could accept the entire CarsGuide luggage set with minimal disruption to the view out the rear window. I did have to remove the luggage cover, however.

There is no under floor storage with a small cutaway for the tyre repair kit, so you will need to store your charging cables in the boot.

Let’s get the price out of the way immediately, because on the face of it, the VZe is a tough sell.

This plug-in hybrid version of the Formentor comes in at a whopping $60,990, before on-road costs (or $66,990 drive-away). There’s no getting around how expensive it is. The bright side is it costs no more than its top-spec alternative, the VZx, which is the same car but with a bigger engine and all-wheel drive. The downside is it’s almost as expensive as a Golf R.

This puts it in a tough place. Performance-wise it can’t quite match a pure combustion rival, and on the electric car front you can have a Tesla Model 3 or Polestar 2 at a similar cost. The Cupra brand itself is even in a strange semi-premium spot, with the most direct rivals to this car being the Mini Countryman PHEV (from $64,000).  

You’d have to be committed to buying a plug-in hybrid then, with everything that entails. Thankfully, the Formentor VZe is not only notable for its drive experience (more on this later), but it’s also well equipped.

Standard gear includes 18-inch alloy wheels, a 10.25-inch digital dash, 12-inch multimedia touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a wireless phone charger, built-in navigation, surround parking sensors, bucket seats with cloth trim (these appear to be a similar style to the ones which appear in the Golf R), tri-zone climate control, full LED head and tail lights, with Curpa logo puddle lamps, leatherbound heated steering wheel, keyless entry and push-start ignition, adaptive chassis control, and a progressive steering tune usually reserved for the more upmarket Volkswagen Group products.

It’s a nice set of gear, and if you’re missing high-end seats, they can be optioned with the $2050 ‘Leather Package’ which upgrades the trim, while also adding heating and power adjust with memory.

The only other options are a sunroof ($1800) and premium paint ($475). It’s nice to see Cupra throw in the Type 2 to Type 2 public charging cable at no extra cost.

Ford does an excellent range of small turbo engines. The "normal" Focus range (such as it is, now the wagon has disappeared from the market) comes with a 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder engine. Bucking the SUV-this-size trend (yes, I know it's not really an SUV), this punchy little unit delivers an impressive 134kW and 240Nm. They're both very decent numbers for such a small engine.

The big numbers continue with the transmission boasting eight gears, a number you don't often find in a hatchback. It's a traditional torque-converter auto, too, so those of you who have bad memories of Ford's old PowerShift twin clutches should worry no more.

Power goes to the front wheels only and you'll get from 0 to 100km/h in 8.7 seconds.

The Formentor VZe pairs a 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine producing 110kW/250Nm with an electric motor producing 85kW/300Nm. The two can combine using a boost function, for a maximum combined output of 180kW/400Nm.

The front wheels are driven via a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, and the electric motor is seated between the transmission and engine.

A 12.8kWh battery pack allows a theoretical purely electric driving range of 58km, although I was seeing more like 40 at best in the real world, with the adjustable regen set to the higher of two available settings.

Ford's official testing for the big window sticker delivered a 6.4L/100km result on the combined cycle. In my time with the Focus, I got 7.2L/100km indicated on the dashboard, which is a pretty solid result given the Focus spent a good deal of the time on suburban or urban roads.

With its 52-litre tank, you'll cover around 800km if you manage the official figure, or just over 700km on my figures.

As with most plug-in hybrids, the Formentor VZe has a very good-looking claimed fuel consumption of 1.9L/100km, although this assumes you’ll religiously charge it up. In my week with the car I saw 5.5/100km, with the caveat that I was mostly driving it in the hybrid mode as I was far from places I could charge it up.

Thankfully, the hybrid driving mode is very good, but one of the most annoying things about this car is how long it takes to charge.

The Formentor VZe’s AC inverter offers a maximum rate of just 3.6kW, and from the base level my car informed me it would take almost four hours to charge from a public charger.

Again, like many plug-in hybrids, this car is really only suitable for those able to charge in their home garage. It takes too long to charge this car on a public outlet to make the most out of its electric features.

It also requires mid-shelf 95 RON unleaded fuel for its small turbocharged engine.

Despite the very mild off-road pretensions, if it's a comfortable city ride you're after, the Active is the Focus to have. While the ST-Line isn't uncomfortable - not by a long way - the Active's more compliant tyres and higher ride height (30mm at the front and 34mm at the rear) iron out the bigger bumps without sacrificing much of the sportier car's impressive dynamic prowess, even with the low-rolling-resistance tyres.

The cracking 1.5-litre turbo is responsive and well-matched to the eight-speed auto. The big torque number pushes you along the road and makes overtaking much less dramatic than a 1.5-litre three-cylinder has any right to. 

Ford's trademark Euro-tuned quick steering is also along for the ride, making darting in and out of gaps a quick roll of the wrist, which has the added benefit of meaning you rarely have to take your hands off the wheel for twirling. That darting is aided and abetted by the engine and gearbox, with the turbo seemingly keeping the boost flowing with little lag. It's almost like they planned it that way.

You have good vision in all directions, which almost renders the fact that the blind-spot monitoring is optional acceptable. Almost. It's very easy to get around in, easy to park and, just as importantly, easy to get in and out of. Compared to, say, a Toyota Corolla, the rear doors are very accommodating. 

The Formentor VZe might be the best plug-in hybrid I’ve driven, certainly at this end of the market. It does something so few hybrids in this class try to, or are even capable of. It’s a lot of fun.

The Formentor manages to pack all the entertaining drive characteristics of something like a Golf GTI into a car which can be driven fully electrically.

It’s a thing of brilliance. The car feels agile, responsive, and lightweight, with some magic at work to hide the weight of its nearly 13kWh of batteries under the floor.

It also blends the instantaneous response of the electric motor in quite nicely with the surge of the 1.4-litre turbocharged engine, the two complementing each other with some grace. On a rare occasion, there is a slight delay between the electric motor waning off and the torque of the combustion engine meeting it, but these instances are few and far between.

With a healthy amount of torque available instantly, it also does away with the need to worry about the occasionally fiddly dual-clutch automatic transmission. 

As to going fast in a straight line, the VZe is capable of combining its two power sources to very easily overwhelm the front wheels. It has a 0-100km/h sprint time of 7.0 seconds, although feels as though it could best this, traction allowing. A peak of 400Nm is an incredible amount of torque for such a small two-wheel drive vehicle, after all.

The electric driving is of course smooth and easy to work with, although the regeneration, even on its highest of two available settings, can be quite mild. When set to hybrid mode, it drives more or less like a Toyota hybrid, limiting the amount of electrical assistance available on the accelerator pedal.

This is good, because some PHEVs will simply drain the electric system first, with the engine only turning on with a solid press of the accelerator, but the Formentor’s combined accelerator approach means you can drive in stop start traffic for nearly 200km before it manages to drain the battery (trust me, I tested it).

It exudes sportiness from behind the wheel, too, with a low-set driving position, neat customisable dash settings which offer plenty of information, and a sporty, thin wheel which offers direct feedback unsurprisingly similar to that of a car like the Golf R.

While it might not be the most competent electric vehicle, then, nor as brilliant as something like a Golf R, it’s an excellent hybrid offering unprecedented levels of driver engagement for a car with this kind of technology. I liked driving it a lot.

The full active safety suite is available across the Formentor range. Active items in this list include freeway-speed auto emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, lane keep assist with lane departure warning, blind-spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert, and side assist which warns you if you’re going to open your door into traffic.

Adaptive cruise control also features, and the Formentor has a comprehensive suite of eight airbags (including a driver’s knee airbag and centre airbag between the front occupants).

There are three top-tether child-seat mounting points on the rear row, and two ISOFIX mounts on the outer seats.

The Formentor has a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating to a 2021 standard, it scored relatively highly in three of four categories.

Ford offers a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty and a roadside-assistance package that consists of a membership to your local motoring organisation. 

The first five services cost $299 each and also include a free loan car and a 12-month extension to your roadside assist membership for up to seven years.

Cupra shares the same five-year and unlimited kilometre warranty as its VW parent, and at the time of writing, includes three years of scheduled servicing for free.

The brand has not settled on how much its servicing plans will cost after that period (again, at the time of writing). While VW Group’s five-year service plans aren’t usually outrageous, proceed with caution.

The Formentor VZe needs to visit the workshop once every 12 months or 15,000km, whichever occurs first.