Our cars: Ford Focus 1.0T Ecoboost - December

Ford Focus 1.0T Ecoboost 125 Zetec

Week ending December 21
Mileage 7213
Driven this week 113

Ford Focus review

Ouch! I don't have particularly long legs, but every now and then I whack my knee against the bottom of the Focus’s steering column as I swing my leg to get out of the car.

You see, there's a pronounced lump on the underside of the column, just where the wheel-adjustment lever and ignition barrel are.

Even though I tend to have my seat as low as it’ll go and the steering wheel as far up as possible, I often bash myself on the same piece of protruding plastic trim. It's the same in other Fords, too. Very annoying.

Barnaby.Jones@whatcar.com

See our Focus on video


Week ending 14 December
Mileage 7100
Driven this week 690

Every morning this week I’ve opened my front door to be greeted by the unmistakable sound of winter’s dawn chorus. Which is to say the sound of idling engines and the ‘shiiiick, shiiick’ sound of neighbours scraping car windows with whatever lies to hand (usually a discarded CD case if they’re anything like me.)

Not me this week, though. Oh no. I’ve had the pleasure of using colleague Barnaby Jones’s Ford Focus, which comes complete with a heated windscreen as standard. The button for the heated screen is one of those that you simply disregard for the bulk of the year, but when you finally need to press it, boy is it a relief to have it there.

So while others in my street have been fending off imminent frostbite, I’ve been able to simply climb into the Focus, start it up, press the button and wait (although the screen does seem to take quite a while to actually do its thing). It proves that simple technology works.

Euan.Doig@whatcar.com

Week ending November 30
Mileage 6410
Driven this week: 26 miles

With two kid's parties, a trip to see Santa and a weekend supermarket trip looming, I thought I'd put the Focus to test doing all the things families do in a weekend.

It proved to be a bit of a reverse Tardis. From the outside, it looks a decent size, but once you're behind the wheel you suddenly feel cramped and wonder where all that space has gone.

My two boys were comfy in the back, but didn’t have a huge amount of legroom, which resulted in the little one absentmindedly kicking the driver's seat the whole time.

Visibility isn't great, so I ended up having to raise my seat up and forward to the max. Not a great combination when you then need to pull down the sun visor and can't because you're so far forward!

It wasn't all bad. The boot was nice and big, and I thought the Focus was quiet on the move.

By Michele Hall