Focus. Diesel. Now.

[niky]

The Ford Focus has always been an exceptional car, but a heavy body and a gasoline engine mated to an ancient four-speed automatic transmission have handicapped it immensely on the local market. The new Honda Civic has it beaten black and blue in terms of outright speed and economy, and has the lion's share of the market.

Well, place your bets for Car Of The Year 2007, people... Ford's finally got a contender...


pic courtesy of rangerXLT / rav_5 /ravien of Ford Club Philippines


pic courtesy of stone911 of Ford Club Philippines



Quick low-down:
136 hp at 4000 rpm
340 Nm of torque at 2000 rpm (that's more than the 1.7 million peso Subaru WRX puts out)
13.5 km/l - city fuel economy
20.5 km/l - highway fuel economy (media teams got 20 km/l crawling around Subic's restricted speed zone, with its zillions of stop signs).

Six speed gearbox with a sweeeeet shifter (Euro-style) with a very positive and smooth action, heavy duty clutch (amazingly strong... no burnt clutch smell despite the numerous drag launches, and absolutely no slippage on drop-clutch launches) with a light feel, and still the best sound insulation, ride, handling and brakes in the compact class.

Oh, and there's a 1.8 liter gasoline hatchback coming out, too. ;)

Price: confirmed at 1.089 million pesos. Whew!

Head on over to http://forum.fordclubph.com for more of the buzz. Man, the guys are excited.

[alwayz_yummy]

yehey!!!! kailan testdrive pasabit naman please...

una ko nakita ata yan sa manila auto show.. then 1st ko nadinig ang makina sa "hotwire" sa silvercity..

gusto ko maramdaman ang takbo!

may dvd parin ba?

[Auto_Xer]

[QUOTE=niky;866090]The Ford Focus has always been an exceptional car, but a heavy body and a gasoline engine mated to an ancient four-speed automatic transmission have handicapped it immensely on the local market. The new Honda Civic has it beaten black and blue in terms of outright speed and economy, and has the lion's share of the market.

Well, place your bets for Car Of The Year 2007, people... Ford's finally got a contender...


pic courtesy of rangerXLT / rav_5 /ravien of Ford Club Philippines

Cooking it into the corner....

[niky]

Hahaha... actually, that's a TRS instructor, doing it on purpose. They destroyed a whole bunch of tires last weekend...

Man, it was a blast. There will definitely be a few more test-drives, and JP Tuason is talking about setting up some of these babies for track work.

The additional down-low torque makes a joke out of autocross work. They had another car (2.0, 5 speed MT, gasoline, 155 hp... wanna guess what it was? ) do the autocross, and despite the considerably better acceleration out-of-the-hole of the "enemy" car, it couldn't match the cornering speed and corner-exit speed of the diesel... worth a difference of 1.2 or 1.5 seconds on a 43-45 second autocross course.

[artpogi]

wow hayuf sa torque!

[drey]

Nice! Now replace the old TRS cars with this diesel Focus...

At sana, lower the price tag of the TRS racing lessons... hehehe...

[FedEx]

ganda sana makakuha nko nito pero mahal heheh hirap ipon..

[niky]

Hehehe... I'm seriously thinking about trading in the RS for this baby... To say the Ford Club was impressed is an understatement.

[mazdamazda]

Wow... they are launching the Ford Focus Diesel! Man - I would've loved to drag launch one. :innocent:

[niky]

RE:11.5s Accent

"Book" time doesn't always jive with actual time... Honda always underestimates their cars, while some manufacturers overestimate them. If the Accent is 11.5 to 100 km/h, then the Lynx and the Focus TDCi are slower than molasses. (I've timed the Lynx to 8.6, TRS has timed the Focus to 9.1... and the Accent is faster than the Focus and feels as quick as the Lynx, at least)

Given decent weather (turbos love cool air), you can get the Accent down to 8.5 or 8.6 (as per C!Mag's VBox). With luck, maybe 8 flat (I've yet to try with timing equipment). An SIR is under 8 if well-driven, but slower if launched under 4k rpm.

But you don't usually drag launch at the stoplight, and the Accent has enough torque to walk an RS or an SIR from a roll.

Anyone have one we can test? I'll bring the VBox and lunch.

[Tintoy_D_Great]

Oh, and there's a 1.8 liter gasoline hatchback coming out, too. ;)

- - - got this one just last week. Would you know the mileage after the break in period? The dealer said it is around 10-11kms per liter on average but on my first week, it showed only 5 kms/liter city driving.

[niky]

Depends on where. In city traffic, maybe 6-8 km/l.

Where is your route? That has a big effect on fuel economy.

[niky]

Powershift might be expensive. It'd make more sense to sell a Focus TDCi powershift as a "luxury car"... put back the sunroof, rear AC, etcetera... upgrade the plastics and add a bodykit and DVD player... sell the car at 1.5m.

Because the "Powershift" might increase the price of the Focus TDCi from 1.1 to 1.2m, anyway.

[corbon44]

Powershift might be expensive. It'd make more sense to sell a Focus TDCi powershift as a "luxury car"... put back the sunroof, rear AC, etcetera... upgrade the plastics and add a bodykit and DVD player... sell the car at 1.5m.

Because the "Powershift" might increase the price of the Focus TDCi from 1.1 to 1.2m, anyway.

I would be surprised if it wasn't significantly more expensive. They'll squeeze the most off of novelty to pay for development expenses.

However, with an average price per liter difference between Diesel and 95 Octane Petrol of P7 and at least double the projected fuel efficiency against my Cefiro V6 A/T (currently at 6km/li!!!), a P100,000 price difference could be recovered after less than 8,000km ~ about a year's worth of travel for me.

Probably for most, fuel savings could actually pay for the price premium after less than a year.

[Biggs]

Di ba P1.104M na ngayon ang MSRP ng 6SP M/T TDCi? Baka kaya na nilang ibenta ang Powershift sa P1.2M+ -- pantapat na rin sa Civic 2.0 S-L at Lancer 2.0 GT-A.

[niky]

Well, we won't know till we get it. One can only hope it won't be too expensive, but...

Still, DSG or not, I think the manual Focus is still the one to get... still the best driving car in the segment, by a mile.

[corbon44]

Well, we won't know till we get it. One can only hope it won't be too expensive, but...

Still, DSG or not, I think the manual Focus is still the one to get... still the best driving car in the segment, by a mile.

Absolutely one of the best in it's class. I've also heard good feedback so far (though only a handful) from current owners. However, for us "older" folks, the convenience of an autotranny for a daily driver would outweigh the driving experience of a six-speed stick.

A side note: I was interviewing an applicant yesterday who coincidentally works for Ford Philippines (I'm not saying if it's Ford Group or Ford Manufacturing). The applicant was involved in "new product" introduction and I couldn't help asking when an A/T focus diesel would be available locally.

Despite insisting that they are not allowed to divulge details on new product introduction, the applicant was kind enough to share that the PowerShift transmission would indeed be offered locally.

I'm giving the job offer tomorrow.

[niky]

Hmmm... time to call some people I know...

[niky]

Meron daw, but I don't know when stock will be available.

[Sanondail]

balita ko magkakaroon daw ng BLACK this coming august
sabi naman nung iba baka november pa daw...depende na lang siguro sa dealer



n00b question po
gaano po ba katigas ang clutch pedal ng focus TDCi
kung ikukumpara sa Pajero 97?

wala po kasi akong kilalang meron ganitong kotse kaya
di ko masubukan personally