Ford Focus 2009 News

Fast and flashy. That's the Geneva show of 2009 in two words.

The Focus goes on sale next month and like the current car, will be available as a five-door hatch and four-door sedan. Prices have risen $300 and $1500 depending on the model but buyers get more equipment and improved safety levels. The new LV-series will be available in four core models, entry CL, LX and TDCi and Zetec. Anti-skid brakes are standard across the range while electronic stability control and traction control are standard on LX, TDCi and Zetec models. Apart from the refreshed exterior, Ford has answered criticism of the car's low-rent interior with vastly improved quality and enhanced comfort levels. There is a black soft-touch dash pad, along with the soft-touch upper door trims, contrasting with a tan coloured inner roof lining to visually lighten the cabin. The dark dashboard is designed to reduce reflection in bright conditions common in Australia. In front of the driver is a large-face tachometer and speedometer set deeply into individual binnacles. Positioned above are small-face water temperature and fuel gauges, with each surrounded by a silver bezel. And LCD information screen displays time, outside temperature, trip meter and odometer. The LCD screen also has a trip computer. The revised centre console and redesigned window and mirror switches accompany intuitive controls for air conditioning, heater and ventilation system. At night, the centre stack controls are illuminated in soft red light which is more soothing,versus the stark white of the previous generation Focus. The centre console is more user friendly with a sliding armrest, two cupholders and storage cubbies. The 107kW 2.0-litre Duratec engine carries over and can be mated to either a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic transmission. Ford is also debuting its innovative six-speed PowerShift automatic in the TDCi, in combination with the potent 100kW/320Nm 2.0-litre Duratorq turbodiesel engine. The TDCi with Powershift returns a fuel economy figure of 5.9 litres/100km.   The 2009 Melbourne International Motor Show...  

In a swiftly changing motoring environment carmakers are searching for new ways to cut fuel use and emissions and improve efficiency.Among the hundreds of concepts and new and updated models on display at the Paris motor show over the next 15 days are some definite standouts. Renault has combined gull-wing doors, comfort, refinement and a slippery design with a hybrid diesel engine and plonked it all on massive 23-inch wheels in its range-topping Ondelios concept car (cover picture).It's 4.8m long and has a hybrid 150kW version of the 2.0-litre dCi engine.There are also two 20kW electric motors at the front and rear to provide extra boost recovered during braking.Mercedes is unveiling one of the world's fastest cabriolets. The SLR McLaren Roadster 722S has 478kW of power and accelerates from 0-100km/h in 3.7 seconds before reaching a top speed of 335km/h.Just 150 of the two-seater supercars will be built. It complements Mercedes' other show star the ConceptFascination, a wild two-door sportswagon. It's a modern version of the old British “shooting-brake” where a wagon tail has been planted on a sporty saloon.Citroen's crossover concept, Hypnos, hasa 150kW engine that boasts miserly fuel efficiency figures of 4.5-litres per 100km.However, it what's inside that is different. An extremely colourful rainbow light show highlights its sleek styling.Honda is using the Paris show to highlight its green commitment. Star of its stand is the new Insight Concept, a dedicated petrol-electric hybrid car in the vein of Toyota's Prius.It is expected to go into production within the next few years.From the US, GM will debut a close to production version of its revolutionary Volt electric car. Chevrolet is showing its new crucial small car the Cruze, plus its first seven-seat multi-purpose family car, the Orlando show car.A form of SUV-family van and wagon crossover, it has a 2.0-litre diesel engine.Alfa Romeo is unveiling its little MiTo compact which is due to come to Australian the middle of next year.Fiat is showing the MiTo's likely competitor in the super-mini category, the 120kW 500 Abarth EsseEsse (SS) plus its PUR-O2 eco-range of cleaner, greener 500s. New technology includes the ability for the engine to turn itself off while idling and back on to continue driving.Mini will show its all-wheel-drive Crossover Concept, while BMW will premiere its X1 wagon. The Mini is intended for adventurous twenty-somethings, while the Concept X1 will go into production as a safe, practical family car.Chasing a similar small, sporty car market is Audi with its new A1. The near-production version will be a feature of its stand.Saab is exhibiting its 9-X Air concept car, while Volvo is debuting its production-ready ultra-safe XC60 crossover which is headed for Australia.Porsche has several new models in the911 range plus the go-anywhere Cayenne S Transsyberia super-4WD.Mazda's all-new Kiyora urban compact four-cylinder concept car will sit alongside the world debut of production cars, the new generation MX-5, the Mazda6 with a 2.2-litre turbo diesel engine and the Mazda2 1.6-litre diesel.Lamborghini has joined the rush to GT supercars with its four-door Estoque concept.Like Porsche's Panamera, Maserati's Quattroporte and Aston Martin's upcoming four-seater, the Estoque, brings a new versatility to one of the world's most uncompromising sports marques.Lamborghini stresses that although there are no production plans for the AWD Estoque it has been developed as fully production capable.Toyota has three world premiere vehicles ranging from its little four-seater city car, the iQ, to the all-new Avensis sedan and wagon and the 1.4-litre diesel-engined Urban Cruiser All Wheel Drive.Ford is debuting the all-new Ka city car with a choice of 1.2-litre petrol and 1.3-litrediesel engines, the hot Focus RS and the new economic Fiesta.Volkswagen will show off its latest Golf GTi. The hot hatch for 2009 is cleaner, smoother and much more refined than earlier cars.It will still come with a 155kW turbo petrol engine and the promise of a 7.2-second sprint to 100km/h, but is missing the wild body bits of earlier GTi road runners.Nissan's debuting Nuvu concept is just three-metres long. It only has two normal seats plus a third that folds down for luggage and groceries. The city car has solar panels on the glass roof.Ferrari will debut its chic two-seater V8 California sports car.From Korea will come Hyundai's i20 small car and a 2.4-litre engined hybrid SUV.Kia is showing its Soul range of urban crossover concepts that come with either petrol or diesel engines. There's also a hybrid version. Additional reporting by Kevin Hepworth and Paul Gover. 

The car, which will be sold both locally and export, could utilise “first in segment technology”, according to Ford of Europe's vehicle line director, Gunnar Herrmann.This means things like stop-start technology and Ford's ECOboost engine technology which utilises direct injection and turbocharging to deliver up to 20 per cent better fuel economy and lower emissions than comparable-capacity vehicles.Herrmann says the next-generation Focus will also break the 100g/km CO inf2 barrier, which will be important in European countries that tax high C0 inf2 emissions.Less than 100g/km in CO2 is currently more associated with cars smaller than the Focus.Ford already sells a Focus model in Europe, called ECOnetic, which is powered by an 81kW 1.6-litre Duratorq TDCi engine with a particulate filter.This car delivers an average fuel consumption of just 4.3litres for 100km, which corresponds to an average CO2 emission of only 115g/km.Ford Australia plans to built 40,000 Focuses annually, including diesel and petrol variants.Herrmann says the next-generation C-car platform architecture that will underpin the locally built Focus will be more flexible and cheaper to build.It will have better attention to noise, vibration and harshness and improved quality, he says.Ford's four-cylinder ECOboost engine can also produce more torque than a larger four cylinder engine with better fuel economy.Herrmann cited the example of Volkswagen's twin-charger 1.4-litre four cylinder, which uses both supercharging and turbocharging to deliver the power of a higher capacity engine with the economy of a small four cylinder.ECOboost technology could also rival hybrids and diesels for real-world economy and emissions, he says.In Europe, diesel has previously been cheaper than petrol but rising prices have put it on a par with petrol.Ford chief engineer ofd product development in Europe, Andreas Ostendorf, says many buyers are now moving away from turbodiesels in Europe to smaller capacity turbo petrol engines.“That's a big change in thinking,” he says.Turbodiesels currently dominating the European car market, representing up to 80 per cent of total European sales of small and light cars. 

The car – to be launched in 2009 – has a specially developed, turbocharged version of the Duratec 2.5-litre engine, based on Focus ST, but significantly revised to generate 155kW of power and more than 400 Nm of torque, with the aim of giving an excellent power-to-weight ratio.Various chassis innovations, developed in conjunction with Ford's Advanced Engineering Centre in Aachen are being tuned for the new car by the Cologne-based Ford Team RS.According to Ford, their overriding objective is to achieve optimized driving dynamics and on road performance through an advanced technology front-wheel drive system, combined with a limited-slip differential.“In early prototypes based on Focus ST vehicles, the new system is more than meeting our targets for exceptional levels of traction, handling and steering,” project leader and Ford Europe’s Vehicle Line Director for Performance Vehicles, Jost Capito, says.“Now, we are going through the rigorous job of proving out our technical approach in extensive testing and tuning over a variety of roads including the most demanding track in the world, the `Green Hell’ that is the Nürburgring Nordschleife!”Further technical details of the all-new Focus RS will be released closer to launch. 

Developing a convertible version of any modern passenger car is always going to be an exercise in compromises. You can make the body stronger and stiffer to stop it flexing, but that adds extra weight that can also undermine dynamics – and boost the fuel bill. The trick is to find a good compromise point, and the Coupe-Cabriolet version of Ford’s Focus has managed that by coming close to matching the roofed variants’ handling without feeling like it’s been carved from a lead billet. They’ve even met the design challenge of making the car look equally good with the metal top up or down, with help from legendary Italian designers Pininfarina – who have penned quite a few high-end cars, including the occasional Ferrari and Maserati. As you’d expect, there’s a strong Ital-chic flavour to the car from the A-pillar back, the part that Pininfarina developed to accommodate the Coupe-Cabriolet function. What’s surprising is how well they’ve segued the design from what is basically the Focus sedan/hatch nose (with a bit of extra chrome tarting up around the grilles and fog lights). The best example is how the headlight wing sweep – arguably the best line on the donor car – now flows along the rising window-line and blends into the C-pillar’s subtle trailing slice that throws light along the side of the boot-lid, and visually trims what could otherwise be a bulbous butt. It’s hard to decide if the C-C looks better with the powered two-piece roof up or down, but since it takes only 29 seconds to change it, you can indulge any indecision without too much time or effort. Just be careful not to do it when you’re backed close to a wall, because the boot lid slides back about 30cm to accommodate the operation. A cargo separator stops the roof closing if your gear is piled too high, and boot space is excellent, offering a class-leading 534 litres with the roof up and 248 with it down. And unlike some other convertibles there’s enough of a gap with the roof folded to slide a small suitcase in and out, but sadly the spare wheel is a skinny 80km/h space saver. The front row gets plenty of room, and with seats lowered 20mm, even plenty of headroom by convertible standards. The back seat is too snug for adults on a long trip, but the expected buyer for this car will only be taking friends for a chic cruise and very few will be strapping kids in the back – although it might see a lot of use carrying matching luggage or fashionable pets. There’s a premium feel to the interior with quality materials and switchgear, very comfortable heated leather seats, cooled glove-box, automatic headlights, rain-sensing wipers, and a perimeter anti-theft alarm The six-speaker Sony audio system has an iPod jack and offers better clarity than most standard systems – especially when you consider it has to fight wind noise — but still tends to diminish some of the high and low nuances. There’s an extensive safety fit-out, including anti-skid brakes (20mm larger than on the sedan) with electronic brakeforce distribution for better effort and brake assist for panic situations, switchable stability control, traction control, twin front and front-side airbags. In a crash, moveaway systems reduce the chance of you being speared by pedals or the steering wheel column, and 20cm rollover bars fire upwards in 0.10sec – breaking through the rear window if necessary — when their gyros detect things are about to go topsy-turvy. Sits on 17” alloy wheels at each corner of an ultra stiff body with a rigid passenger safety shell and McPherson strut front/control blade rear suspension borrowed from the Focus Turbo. The sole engine on offer in Australia is the 2.0-litre Duratec four-cylinder that develops the same 107kW of power at 6000rpm and 185Nm of torque at 4500rpm in the other Focus variants. This is mated to a five-speed manual for $45,490 that Ford says uses a low 7.5L/100km, or a four-speed sequential automatic for $2000 and 0.8L/100km more. Options include metallic paint at no cost, 18” alloys for $1200 or reverse parking sensors for $500. Ford says 100 of the cars are already at dealerships, and they hope to sell that many every month – with about 75 being the automatic option — in a segment that has grown 27 per cent over the past five years of this self-rewarding decade. ON THE ROADThe worth of the body’s extra stiffening shows in it feeling very solid under all conditions, but over rough sections things like the rearview mirror and other bits around the cabin succumb to a touch of rattling, which undermines the pleasure There’s also a lot of top-down turbulence above 80km/h, which can be reduced a bit by putting all the windows up, but might be better addressed with the wind deflector on the accessory list. This would also prevent you leaving the indicator on after accidentally fumbling around the volume control stalk below it – as we did – for at least three postcodes before we heard it clicking its little heart away, probably to the annoyance of following traffic. As with the rest of the Focus range, there’s responsive steering and good turn-in, with just a touch of understeer from the front wheel drive. The short-throw manual shifter is smooth and definite, but at times when one of the five slots is too high and the next too low, you start to wish for an extra gear and shorter ratios However it works well to motivate the engine, which also appears in the sedan/hatch but is working against an extra weight penalty of 150kg in the Coupe-Cab. Add in a couple of adults and a steep hill, and it starts to get overburdened, even with the engine’s otherwise usefully flat torque curve. The four-speed automatic, while quite a good thing in itself – especially with the effortless shifting on the simulated manual side – isn’t quite up to keeping the engine aroused unless you have the revs bubbling, but does make boulevard cruising a breeze. And that’s really the natural habitat for the car. It wants to glide along the café strips with the occasional weekend tour out in the country. And for those purposes it’s a well-sorted and better equipped package rivals at the same price level. Ford Focus Coupe-CabrioletENGINE: 2.0-litre Duratec four-cylinderPOWER: 107kW at 6000rpm TORQUE: 185Nm at 4500rpm PRICE: $45,490 five-speed manual (7.5L/100km), $47,490 four-speed sequential automatic (8.3L/100km)

Though Ford Australia is concentrating on putting the Focus into local production from 2011, president Tom Gorman says its shared-platform architecture also presents other opportunities. The next-generation Focus, codenamed C2, will share much with the new C-Max multi-purpose vehicle and Kuga crossover all-wheel-drive. Though keen to hose down speculation, Gorman says something like the C-Max or even Kuga could present opportunities. “That might be the case. But right now it's really just about the Focus four and five-door,” he says. “Some of the smaller brands like the XR5 won't be localised." “We'll still take that out of Europe. But it does open up for us more opportunity for success in that small-car segment. If things happen in the future and something like C-Max or other derivatives make sense, you'd have to see what size the volume is. What I don't want to do is be in a position where we're putting 200-units-a-month opportunities into the plant. That's very hard to justify economically.” The Kuga goes on sale next year after its Frankfurt motor show debut in September. Though details are scarce, the Kuga will probably offer a range of petrol and turbodiesel engines, including the 2.0-litre 100kW/320Nm TDCi that has just appeared in the Focus. The Kuga is based on the Iosis X concept unveiled at last year's Paris motor show and introduces Ford's new “kinetic design” language into a compact and distinctive AWD crossover. Ford of Europe executive design director Martin Smith says the company knows image-conscious customers want a very individual car. The Kuga, which uses underpinnings similar to those in the robust Land Rover Freelander and proposed Volvo XC60, will be built at Ford's Saarlouis plant in Germany.    

Beginning of summer will signal a concerted small-car push from Ford with its coupe-convertible Focus. It has delayed the arrival of the droptop compact to give it the best possible launching conditions, when sales of open-air contenders rise as sharply as the temperature. “Summer is the right time to launch the convertible,” says Jogi Shetti, head of import product planning at Ford Australia. He won't reveal the exact time or its likely price, but admits the CC will come from Europe and be sold in the same style as the company's successful Focus XR5 hot hatch. “We're thinking to keep it simple — one model with the petrol powertrain.” Shetti says; the plan to take Ford away from its Falcon-first emphasis has the potential to bring many new small and medium-class cars to Australia. But denies the decision to import its bread-and-butter Focus models from South Africa, not Europe, will hurt local customers. There's talk in Europe of a new Focus next year but he says the rumours are wrong and even if there is an update similar to the one just done for the Australian car, including a Focus diesel, it will quickly make its way here. “There is no all-new Focus, because this one is virtually brand new,” Shetti says. “The Focus was launched two years ago in Australia and this is our first freshening. There will be one more before there's a totally new model. That will be the same for Europe.” Shetti admits Ford Australia is looking at extra Focus models, including the red-hot RS all-wheel drive turbo and the S-Max people. He's defensive about the potential for a diesel engine in the Fiesta and the plan for the return of the mid-sized Mondeo later this year: “We will have a diesel powertrain in the Mondeo — that's been announced. This (the Focus) is our foray into diesel and we'll learn. “It's easy to tick boxes on a piece of paper to get things but we have to understand the diesel customer. There are options all over the place.”