Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car

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Fri 20 Nov 2015 12:00
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - eustace

Apologies in advance for the long post, but I thought I would give as much context as possible, to get the right advice...

I need to buy a second car. This will be a used car for around the £2000 mark.

We currently have a 2008 Ford Focus hatchback, Petrol.
I am very happy with the car, except for one thing. While doing motorway trips at 70 mph, the fuel economy is stubbornly stuck
at 30 mpg. Overall fule economy is about 37 mpg, as per the car reading.
However I don't do a whole lot of motorway driving, perhaps about 300 miles a moth.


I generally commute to work using a combination of bike and train.
However we have moved to a new home now (in outer London) and the nearest railway station to my destination is 7 miles
away from home. During the autumn and winter months, I find that I am increasingly using the car to drive for work, particulalrly
when it rains.
Also I am a little wary of riding back in the evenings (when it is dark), through unlit country lanes. But maybe I will get used to this and get around to riding in winter as well, on dry days.


Also, the school we have been allocated for our kids is a long walk (1.5 miles). With a kid in nursery and another kid at a different primary school, my wife ends up walking about 6 miles a day, when I take the car to work.

Hence my wife needs a car for the school run.
She would prefer a smaller car (such as a Yaris) due to the easier parking, but I am dubious about the safety of small cars, particularly safety for kids in the event of a rear end collision.

I did explore a Kia Rio, as it has a reasonably large boot / rear crumple zone. But these cars have cam belts (petrol model), and the cost of
changing a cam belt for a 6 year old car (which I am looking at) will be aorund 25% of the worth of the car.

The other option I am considering is to give the Focus to the wife, and get a car for myself for my sporadic commute.
Under this option I am ok with a Focus sized or larger car.
I would also look at getting something a little different from the current Focus, with perhaps,

- A larger engine to get more fuel economy during motorway driving
- Perhaps an estate (for the odd occasion, when we want to pick up a large furniture item or flatpack from ikea).

The main characteristics I will be looking for are; Modern Safety Features (curtain air bags, etc.), Reliability, Fuel Economy.

Based on these considerations I am currently debating 2 choices


A 2005 Ford Focus estate 2.0 (100,000 miles) , for about £1400.

A 2008 Kia Ceed estate diesel (120,000 miles) for about £2000.


I would be interested in hearing suggestions about which of the above options could prove more reliable, and whether there is any
other options I need to look at.

Thanks for reading....

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Fri 20 Nov 2015 13:24
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - RT

Just an observation - it's strange that your 70mph motorway consumption is so much lower than your overall average - all my cars have been the other way round with 40mpg on the motorway and 32mpg overall.

So maybe there's a fault that needs fixing?

Avoid diesel as you're looking at cheap high mileage cars - even if they were expensive low mileage cars you should avoid diesel unless you're doing over 15,000 miles/year.

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Fri 20 Nov 2015 13:41
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - eustace

I believe that this is quite common with the Ford Docus and other 1600cc size engined cars. It is caused by its low gearing and the absence of a 6th gear, which makes the engine work at a 3700 - 3800 rpm, to maintain 70 mph. This problem is supposedly avoided in diesel cars and bigger petol engines (1.8 and above) because the engine needs to work at much lower revolutions, to sustain 70 mph. At least, that is my understanding....

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Fri 20 Nov 2015 18:30
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - bazza

Our 2010 1.6 Focus, average mpg 40 mpg, dropped a bit recently to about 38 mpg with a lot of town driving. Up to 44mpg measured on a long cross country run. ( computer readout is a bit optimistic, about 6% or so.)

Have you checked that all your brakes are working properly and not sticking and pump your tyres up to the max touring fully loaded spec.

Road noise is my biggest complaint with the Focus , not mpg, which is reasonable.

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Sat 21 Nov 2015 08:16
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - daveyK_UK
It will be the 5th gear is set to low

Same problem on Vauxhall Zafira 1.6 engines, they sit near to 4,000 rpm at 70mph
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Sat 21 Nov 2015 08:42
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - RT

The gearing issue is nonsense - I got better fuel consumption out of a 1980 Ford Escort 1.6 at higher motorway speeds than the OP - it had the aerodynamics of a brick and also was doing 4,000 rpm.

The car has a fault - find it and sort it.

Edited by RT on 21/11/2015 at 08:42

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Sat 21 Nov 2015 10:02
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - eustace

Thanks all for your comments.

@bazza - Hi, yes the brakes are fine. Had the front brake pads replaced a few months ago. My tyres used to be pumped to max fully loaded spec. But then I found that the car bounces around a lot on country roads or over bumps. Was worried that this could rattle the components in the car and shorten their life. So now I keep the tyre pressure to minimum recommended + 2 psi. The ride is much more smoother now, over rougher roads.

@RT - I have found the same issue reported on several forums. In fact the review of the Ford Focus by Which magazine, reported the very same mpg that I am getting, at motorway speeds. Hence my belief that this is a generic issue.

Edited by eustace on 21/11/2015 at 10:05

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Sat 21 Nov 2015 10:31
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - eustace

Back on the topic of choosing a second car, my wife says that she would really like a small car, b'coz of ease of parking.

I am also not comfortable with the traditional idea of bangernomics, where you buy a cheap car and don't look after it, untill it breaks down, and then get another car. Any car that I buy will be well treated / serviced and looked after, and kept for the long term. Hence I would like the car to be more than just a school run car, and capable of longer trips if required.

Considering this I am now thinking of either;

a) Mark1 - Ford Focus or b) Mark 1 - Honda Jazz

Both cars are considerable smaller that our current Mark 2.5 Focus, as well as having larger boots that the average super minis.

For these cars, I will be looking to spend sub-£1000.

I realize that the Ford Focus will need to be one with the cam belt changed, or I will be looking at another cost.

I understand from HJ's CBCB that the cost of servicing the Jazz will be high, because of the additional service item of tappet valve clearances.

Any one has thoughts on the above 2 cars? What are the opinions on relative reliability? Is there any other small car that I can consider, with a larger boot and good reliability?

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Sat 21 Nov 2015 11:45
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - Avant

If you're looking to spend less than £1,000, that is exactly what bangernomics means. Nothing wrong with that, but if it's not what you want, you'll need to spend more.

The less you spend, the more true it is that condition matters more than make or model. But if you want a steer towards a make, either go for a Ford (lots of Fiestas and Focuses to choose from at all prices) or something Japanese like a Honda Jazz or Toyota Yaris or Corolla/Auris (more likely to be reliable even if old).

Finally, avoid diesels: in your other thread you say your annual mileage is fairly low, so you don't need one anyway.

Edited by Avant on 21/11/2015 at 11:48

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Sun 22 Nov 2015 18:06
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - Armitage Shanks {p}

I was getting 37 mpg from a high mileage 2 Litre Petrol Focus with 100K miles recorded. A and B roads mainly

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Mon 23 Nov 2015 12:31
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - John F

For these cars, I will be looking to spend sub-£1000.

I realize that the Ford Focus will need to be one with the cam belt changed, or I will be looking at another cost.

Any one has thoughts on the above 2 cars? What are the opinions on relative reliability? Is there any other small car that I can consider, with a larger boot and good reliability?

For these cars, I will be looking to spend sub-£1000.

I realize that the Ford Focus will need to be one with the cam belt changed, or I will be looking at another cost.

Any one has thoughts on the above 2 cars? What are the opinions on relative reliability?

We get over 37mpg from our local duties 110,000m 2000 Focus auto estate (it's perfectly OK on motorways but we've a more comfy car). It has the problem-free 1.6 Zetec engine with original cambelt which still looks pristine. The 4F27E is a reliable Mazda/Ford box, about 24mph/1000rev top gear which is relaxed on m/ways, engineered for up to 2 litre vans so has an easy time with a light 1.6 and has protected the engine all its life.

Try googling a well known second hand car site and select 10+yr old auto Focus 5 doors up to 1.6l. There are dozens of them for a few hundred pounds. Find one with nice pink coolant, healthy looking oil and nottoorusty subframes (autos are more likely to have been well looked after) and you will probably have a bargain.

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Mon 23 Nov 2015 12:42
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - skidpan

Find one with nice pink coolant, healthy looking oil

I find that one of the most remarkable sentances I have read in recent times considering the poster openly admits he never changes his coolant and rarely changes his oil.

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Mon 23 Nov 2015 17:23
Ford Focus / Other - Help choosing a car - John F

Find one with nice pink coolant, healthy looking oil

I find that one of the most remarkable sentances I have read in recent times considering the poster openly admits he never changes his coolant and rarely changes his oil.

I have explained in a different thread why I consider it both unnecessary and arguably harmful to change the coolant (which is still nice and pink in our 15yr old Focus). I changed the oil in October last year and I shall change it again when the unstressed non-turbo non-chain engine has done another 10 - 12,000 miles, probably next summer at current rate of use, if it has neither crashed or suffered a major expensive failure - e.g. snapped cambelt ;-). I am certainly not changing it just because more than 365 days have gone by.

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