Test Drive: Ford Focus ST is flagrant fun
- Fun: Great blend of go, stop, steer
- Price: Not cheap, but not pricey for the amount of fun
- Practicality: None surrendered for performance's sake
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The best performance cars today aren't all exotics that break 200 mph and your bank account.
You also can get a whole lot now in affordable go-fast-mobiles created by skilled application of giddy-up mojo to mainstream vehicles.
The 2013 Ford Focus ST is such a vehicle.
It's a remarkable engineering success to create a car that blends an easygoing daily personality with on-command snap and growl and do so on a mere mortal's budget.
That's why Focus ST and other well-modified, high-performance mainstreamers seem better than the exotics (which have their own appeals, but value isn't one of them).
The ST model went on sale last month, starting at $24,495 (with shipping). For that, you get interesting looks, the handiness of four doors and a hatchback, 252 horsepower (enough, Ford says, to hit 154 mph, if you have a race track handy) and a federal gas mileage rating of 26 mpg in combined city/highway driving.
Rivals include Volkswagen's GTI four-door hatchback ($25,790 and up, 200 hp, 25 mpg) and Mazda Speed3 ($24,995 and up, 263 hp, 21 mpg).
Only wheel time, of course, can tell you whether good numbers on paper translate to good on the road. Focus ST, it turns out, is good in both ways.
Here are the main pieces that turn a Focus economy compact into a Focus ST yippee-mobile:
Engine: 2-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder good for 252 hp and 270 pounds-feet of torque, in contrast to regular Focus' 160 hp and 146 lbs.-ft.
Hours driving around here showed the high-power engine to be not at all high-strung. It can amble along nicely, or just flat go when you drop down a gear or two and nail the gas pedal.
When accelerating hard, a valve opens in an underhood sound chamber to let you hear more of the engine. Seems contrived, sounds natural.
Ford doesn't publish performance specifications, but shared with Test Drive these averages from its internal testing: 0 to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds, quarter-mile in 14.6 sec. at 97 mph, 60 mph to stop in 117 ft. and maximum cornering force of 0.97g. Those are sufficiently outside the mainstream to give you grins and goose bumps.
Transmission: Six-speed manual. Period. No automatic.
The gearshift moves in crisp, firm fashion. The only gripe is that it's a bit too easy to mistake the 3-4 and 5-6 gear slots. Takes practice to get the feel. Clutch engages briskly. You'll kill the engine if you're inattentive. But it's another thing to practice with joy.
Suspension (another "duh" for a sporty car): ST gets different springs, stabilizer bar and suspension geometry vs. the ordinary Focus.
Driver gets confident, poised cornering — without a jarring ride.
Part of that poise is from the tires: 235 by 40 18-inch Goodyear Eagle summer skins. Figure on separate winter rubber if you live where it snows.
First step up from the base Focus ST is the ST2 for $2,505 more, which is the version that was test-driven. Among other changes, it replaces the standard Focus front seats with cloth Recaro buckets.
They look as if they're going to be impossibly tight and back-breakingly contoured. Nope. Firm-feeling at first, but quickly comfy, and not tiring in several hours.
As in the regular Focus, rear seats are tight, especially with tall people in front. Put the kids in back and drive a bit to decide if it's really a family car.
Drawbacks:
Focus is small inside for its overall footprint, and ST's no different.
There's no backup camera at any price. Seems a big omission. Ford says ST buyers aren't the sort who'll care.
Torque-steer compensation is well-intentioned but wrong.
Like all high-power front-drive cars, ST pulls to one side when you nail the gas. Typically, a driver tugs the wheel the other way.
But in the ST, a compensator does that, so you overdo it when you tug, too. The compensator reads your correction as torque steer the other direction, so pulls the steering back the opposite way, setting up back and forth jerking of the front end.
Unsettling at best.
Navigation is a $795 stand-alone option, not part of the $2,505 ST2 package, but is included in the $4,840 ST3 package.
Test Drive prefers $200 aftermarket navigational systems to most built-ins, so if you can skip the Ford unit and get a Garmin or TomTom or whatever, you'll spend less and might be better off.
Ford says that 45% of early ST buyers are 16 to 35 years old and are newcomers, excited by the notion of a zippy compact. Slightly more, 50%, are 35 to 55. Ford believes many owned the old Focus SVT models, or wished they had, and don't want to miss a similar chance now.
The Focus SVT, launched as a 2002 model and discontinued after the 2004, was fun only in a relative sense. It had wrong gear ratios for a quick, easy start from a dead stop. Its modest power (170 hp) seems laughable in the context of "high performance" today.
Ford sold a Focus ST in Europe until 2010, but never before in the U.S.
Yes, for Focus ST's starting price you could get a nicely appointed, midsize family car. Very practical. Very boring.
But if you don't need much space, and want instead to nourish your automotive soul, Focus ST could have a bull's-eye on your back.
Focus ST at a glance
What? High-performance version of Focus front-drive, four-door, compact offered only as a hatchback.
When? On sale since September.
Where? Made at Wayne, Mich.
Why? Boost the Focus image, draw new buyers.
How much? $24,995 including $795 shipping, to $30,265.
What makes it go? 2-liter turbocharged EcoBoost four-cylinder gasoline engine rated 252 horsepower at 5,500 rpm, 270 pounds-feet of torque at 2,500 rpm. ST is offered only with six-speed manual transmission.
How big? About 6 inches longer, 2 in. wider, 100 lbs. heavier than rival Volkswagen GTI. Focus ST is 171.7 in. long, 71.8 in. wide, 58.4 in. tall on a 104.3-in. wheelbase. Weighs 3,223 lbs. Passenger space is 90.7 cu. ft. Cargo space is 23.8 cu. ft. behind rear seat, 44.8 cu. ft. when rear seat's folded. Turning circle diameter is unusually wide, 39.4 ft.
How thirsty? Rated 23 mpg in the city, 32 mpg highways, 26 in city/highway mix. Test car trip computer showed 25.1 mpg (3.98 gallons per 100 miles) in mix of frisky driving with frequent downshifts and hard throttle on rural two-lanes and relaxed interstate cruising. Burns regular, holds 12.4 gallons.
Overall: Tons o' fun for pounds o' dough.