SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Many of the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.
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Original posting: August 21, 2008
The newly tucked-and-lifted Ford Focus ST is a purpose-built driving machine, so the only choices you have are three doors, with or without leather upholstery and a sunroof, or five doors with leather. The only shifter available is a fully manual six-speeder – none of that sissified automatic stuff, here.
You also get to choose from only two exterior colours – Electric Orange or Performance Blue. Oh, the five-door lets you speak to your Bluetooth-enabled phone, the radio and CD player and the climate control. Bit naff, if you ask me, but that’s progress.
At the heart of the beast is the familiar 5-cylinder 2,5 litre Volvo T5 unit, breathed on a little by the lads at Team Ford RS, to up the ante to 166 kW at 6 000 rpm and 320 Nm at 1 600 rpm. This translates, according to the factory, to a 0 to 100 km/h time of 6,8 seconds, a top speed of 240 km/h and a segment-leading time of 8 minutes 35 seconds around the Nordschleife circuit at the famed Nurburgring.
Keeping everything level is suspension lowered by 25 mm, stiffened front and rear springs, an anti-roll bar at the back and quicker steering ratios. Inside, leather-clad Recaro seats, front and rear, hold you snugly in place so you can get on with the serious business.
The driver’s seat adjusts up and down as well as the usual fore and aft with seatback recline, and both front seats have adjustable squab extenders that provide support all the way to your knees. We fully grown persons appreciate this. Both front chairs offer lumbar support as well, so by the time you have the seat set up right and the steering wheel adjusted for height and reach, you won’t want to get out again.
Motion retardation is taken care of by four-piston calipers on 320 mm vented discs in front and two-piston clampers on solid 280 mm discs at the rear. Naturally, they come with ABS and EBD, while ESP (the stabilising kind, not the mind reading stuff) helps keep you out of trouble.
Other safety kit includes a rigid passenger cell, footwell protection, collapsible steering wheel and pedals, and side impact protection door beams. Among the passive safety features are driver and passenger front and side airbags, side curtain airbags front and rear, pyrotechnic belt pre-tensioners and neck injury protection systems on the front seats.
People room and luggage space are pretty good for what is actually a small-to-medium car, so it’s easy to live with as well.
On the road, the first thing that strikes you is that the ST is not terribly happy puttering through traffic at low revs. Give it freedom to do what it does best, though and you won’t be disappointed. It’s made for chucking into tight bends and flooring the gas to pull itself out, so let it do so. Please?
The only unfortunate side effect is that it costs somewhat at the pumps, but if you wanted the last word in fuel economy, you wouldn’t buy a 2,5-litre turbocharged pavement-burner, would you? Performance costs money, no matter how you get to it, so while this beastie may be difficult to pilot economically, it’s a blast to drive and that’s what counts.
At the end of the day, though, it’s still only a facelift with a few detail improvements and if, like some fans, you were lusting after yet more power, you will have to wait until next year when the Focus RS (224 kW and 400 Nm) arrives.
Test unit from FMCSA press fleet
Pricing at time of release:
3 door: R 251 990
3 door with leather upholstery and sunroof: R 267 091
5 door (leather upholstery): R 269 990
Engine: 2522 cc, inline five-cylinder turbopetrol
Power: 166 kW @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 320 Nm @ 1600 rpm
Performance per Car magazine:
0-100 km/h: 7.5 seconds
Top speed: 237 km/h
Fuel Consumption Index: 11.4 l/100 km
Warranty: 4 years /120 000 km, fully comprehensive
Ford Protect service and roadside assistance plan: 5 years/60 000 km
Service intervals: 20 000 km
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads or goat tracks as well. As a result, my test cars do occasionally get dirty. It's all part of the reviewing process.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material.
If ever I place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with a very similar vehicle already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.
Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. There are no advertisers and no “editorial policy” rules. I add bylines to acknowledge sponsored launch functions and the manufacturers or dealerships that provide the test vehicles. And, as quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so you can see I do actually exist.
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8