Seats five, gets 40 mpg highway and 28 city, has a fun, sporty driving feel, a top safety rating, and a base price of $16,500. Even the fully-loaded top-of-the-line model clocks in at just $22,500. No wonder the Ford Focus is one of the bright stars in the Ford garage.
The Ford Focus has been a top-seller in Europe, and Ford brings this so-called global car to North America with additional high-tech features, including the popular hands-free Sync and MyFord Touch technology. In the higher trim models, you can opt for Ford’s Automated Parking Assist, which literally parks the car for you while you sit in the driver’s seat smiling and laughing like a happy fool, as I did when I tried it recently — on a Lincoln.
Back to the 2012 Ford Focus — it’s got a peppy 2.0 liter, 160 horsepower inline 4-cylinder engine, and drives more like a sporty little European model than a plain vanilla compact. The top Titanium model even features a Sport mode. Even the base model includes stability control and traction control, which are unusual standard features at this price.
The SFE (Super Fuel Economy) package delivers an EPA certified 40 mpg and 28 mpg city through its advanced six-speed automatic transmission. This is important, since many other carmakers use a manual transmission to achieve their highest fuel economy ratings, even though sales of automatic transmissions account for more than 90 percent of the market.
Focus becomes the fourth vehicle in the Ford Motor Company vehicle lineup with an EPA-certified rating of 40 mpg or more.
As for safety, the Focus has received a top rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The Focus has a similar top safety rating from the European equivalent of IIHS, known as Euro NCAP.
Ford Focus competitors include —
- 2012 Chevrolet Cruze,
- Toyota Corolla,
- Honda Civic,
- Mazda 3
- Nissan Versa.
Here’s what other reviewers I trust are saying about the 2012 Ford Focus:
posted by Evelyn Kanter
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