2021 Ford Focus vs 2023 GWM ORA

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.

A funky, tech-savvy and fun city EV that doesn't pretend to be anything its not. This is city motoring made modern. The GWM Ora is not perfect in every way, but fun enough to overcome it.

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.

Okay, so when I first approached the GWM Ora, I wasn't sold. It looked a little too cutesy – especially painted in the 'Glacier Blue' of our test car, one of the five colours on offer – but I've got to admit it grew on me.

Think of it as something of a blend between a new-style VW Beetle and a Fiat 500, with maybe a sprinkling of 911 thrown in for good measure. So retro, still modern, and definitely looks like it was designed in the city, for the city.

And it is cute, especially the way the headlights do a little happy dance whenever you first unlock the car, or the way the tech lights up on the inside when you first get in.

The cabin is genuinely lovely, too, with more soft-touch materials (including the felt-like dash covering and the quilted panels in the doors) and nice touch points (like the rotary-style gear selector) than you find vehicles in this price point from many far more established brands in Australia, and a generally soothing, tech-heavy ambience.

The front seats are a better place to spend time than the back seats, of course – the twin-screen set-up is great, the thin line of air vents that split the dash looks clean and premium, and the four toggle-like switches that shortcut access to some of the climate features are a nice tactile touch, too.

Seriously, it's a nice, comfortable place to spend time, the Ora, and it feels pretty premium to boot.

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 Ora is unashamedly a city car but, thanks to its EV underpinnings, there's a surprising amount of room in the back seat, too.

The Ora measures 4235mm in length, 1603mm in height and 1825mm in width, and it rides on a 2650mm wheelbase.

To put that into perspective, the Toyota Corolla hatch is 4375mm long, 1435mm high and 1790mm wide, so you can see what segment the Ora plays in.

There's not much in the way of amenities for back seat riders – save a single USB charge point – but there is the luxury of space.

I'm 175cm, and I could easily, and comfortably, sit behind my own driving position without touching the seat in front or the roof, and the lack of a tunnel running through the middle of the cabin makes it easier to fit three across the back, too.

The boot, however, is on the small side. Open it, and you'll find just 228 litres of space with the rear seats in place. Fold them flat, and that number grows to 858 litres.

The Ora Extended Range starts at $45,990 plus on-road costs. In true GWM (and Chinese brand, for that matter) style, there is plenty of bang for your buck on offer here.

Outside, there are 18-inch alloy wheels, all-LED lighting (including DRLs), and heated door mirrors.

Inside, there are twin 10.25-inch screens (one in the centre in the cabin, the other that's placed in front of the driver). There's wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, along with wireless device charging, too.

The seats are synthetic leather, but they feel nice enough, and the driver and front passenger seat feature electric adjustment.

There's also dual-zone climate control, as well as USB charge points and a power outlet.

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.

As you've no doubt guessed from the whole 'Extended Range' part of the name, our car is fitted with the biggest battery in the Ora fleet, a 63KWh lithium-ion battery pack, compared to the 48kWh offering in the entry-level Ora.

Power comes courtesy of a front-mounted electric motor delivering 126kW and 250Nm to the front wheels – enough, GWM says, to deliver a sprint to 100km/h in 8.4 seconds.

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.

A bigger battery means a bigger range, and the Ora Extended Range will serve up a very manageable 420km between charges on the WLTP testing cycle.

When it comes time to plug in, an 11kW wallbox (three phase) will see you go from 10 to 80 percent charged in 6.5 hours. Use an 80kW fast charger (you can use more powerful DC chargers, of course, but the input into the Ora is capped) and you'll take on the same level of charge in 50 minutes.

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 GWM Ora Extended Range is the best GWM product I've driven to date. It's really that simple.

Now, full disclosure, I'm yet to drive the brand's new Tank product. But I have driven almost everything else, and nothing felt as instantly easy or as comfortable as my time behind the wheel of the little Ora.

Honestly, it's a pleasing drive at almost every turn, with a smooth delivery of pretty generous power, a ride that handles city streets with aplomb, and steering that is easy and predictable.

It's not perfect – the cabin can be noisy at times, and the screen interface (when you don't have your phone hooked up) is fiddly and demands perfectly precise taps to make it work. And it can feel over-powered, especially in damp conditions, with those little front tyres spinning up a storm when you're too heavy with the accelerator, forcing the traction control to step in.

Oh, and the steering wheel feels comically big, and like you're steering a <i>Pirates of The Caribbean</i> tall ship rather than a city car.

And they're gripes, sure. But the overall impression of the GWM Ora is that of a cute, cheerful little city EV that does a lot more right than it does wrong.

Full credit to GWM here, with the Ora nabbing those coveted five safety stars, this time from Euro NCAP, though the brand says its working on getting them translated to ANCAP stars here in Australia.

The safety story starts with seven airbags, a 360-degree around-view camera and rear parking sensors, but there is a heap of active safety stuff on board, too.

There's AEB with pedestrian and cyclist detection, stop-and-go adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection with lane change assist, lane departure warning and even a semi-autonomous lane keep assist function, which will keep you within the lines on freeways.

Add to that rear cross-traffic alert, rear collisions warning, traffic sign recognition and a driver drowsiness detector, and you've got a pretty full bag of safety goodies.

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.

The Ora is covered by a seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty (the battery is covered for eight years) which includes five years of roadside assistance and five years of capped-price servicing.

Servicing is required every 15,000km or 12 months, with each of your first five capped at just $99.