Ford Buzz

A European Sport Sedan--From Ford

Welcome to the wintry top of the 2012 Ford Focus mountain, the fully equipped, massively geared up "Titanium" edition of the all-new compact sedan. This trim package, starting at $22,270, is $6,000 above the Focus S sedan base camp. With its glossy "piano black" plastic inside and out, aluminum wheels, 8-inch navi/audio/climate/phone touch screen, and its frosty overburden of chrome brightwork, things are very shiny at the summit. You'll need your snow goggles. By the way, secretly, your Sherpa hates you.

The Titanium sedan (the available five-door hatch is $495 more) asks you to consider this Aristotelian question: Would you ever want an extravagantly equipped version of a desperately cheap compact? As I read it, the Titanium Focus has the most content of any car at this price point, including rain-sensing wipers; rearview camera/sensing system; leather sport seats with six-way power and lumbar adjustment; and a 10-speaker Sony audio system, among many electronics. This thing is a slagheap of silicon.

Throw a couple thousand more at this car and you'll get a power moon roof; heated seats; voice-activated navigation; a Lexus-like self-parking feature; and a sport wheel-and-suspension package that shreds California back roads like Wolverine going through Arrow shirts. That's a lot of car for around $26,000 and?to my point?arguably better equipped than an entry-level BMW or Infiniti.

But in the end, you're still driving a Ford Focus, a brand and a car that has historically had the glamour of sweaty feet. Few nameplates outside of Amana could be more appliance-like. Ford has sold more than 10 million Focuses globally since 2000.

Here we encounter the tyranny of brand. Would you buy a Timex watch that keeps time better than the atomic clock in Boulder; a Piper Seminole that can break the sound barrier; a bottle of Andre Cold Duck that out-sparkles Dom Pérignon? Would you, in other words, pay less for more?

With the Focus Titanium, maybe you would. And this is the important thing about the car, transcending its fuel economy (figure about 28/38 miles per gallon), or middling 0-60 times (9 seconds). The brand, the meaning of Ford is changing, becoming more elastic on the high end. Bearing in mind that the Blue Oval has always had more cachet overseas than it has had in the U.S., Ford's Q score is wildly up these days. Indeed, compared with Ford, Justin Bieber is just treading water.

For this sudden love, you could credit many things. Consumer affection is in some ways a zero-sum game, and Toyota's loss over the past two years is definitely Ford's gain. Ford was also the only Detroit car maker to avoid a government-funded bankruptcy?winners don't take bailouts, right? You have to send the product planners a case of beer, as well: Ford's embrace of in-cabin information technology, such as its deal with Microsoft (the Sync system), has given the brand a bit of a hipster edge, as has its whole-hog social networking effort. Ford had socially networked brand advocates running around pushing its Fiesta for a year before the car landed Stateside.

With the new Focus Titanium, we are looking at the stirrings of a notion Henry Ford never remotely considered: Ford as an aspirational brand.

And, it has to be said, part of the desirability of the new Focus has to do with it being an undiluted European car. Based on Ford's global C platform (104.3-inch wheelbase), the Focus was largely designed and engineered in Germany, with a powertrain sorted in England (happily, however, the U.S.-spec Focus will be assembled in Michigan). Our previous Focus was basically warmed over for a decade, remedial in power and performance, while the European Focus grew more sophisticated through two full redesigns. No more. According to Ford execs, the new Focus has 80% global commonality, with the balance being on account of market-specific safety and emission standards.

And so, the European styling, the intentional modernism of the shape, wind-curried and tight-drafted, with a great stance for a small car (a half-inch lower and 3 inches longer than the previous car). I appreciate that Ford design didn't attempt to graft on its Gillette razor grille with the multiple blades (cf., Ford Edge and Fusion). Instead, the Focus gets a powerful triptych-trapezoidal grille, which makes the car instantly recognizable at a distance?what designers call "down the road" graphic. For styling rivals, you'd have to look at Euro-only cars like the Citroën C4 or Peugeot 308. Stateside, compared with the Focus, the Chevy Cruze looks like a lump of arterial cholesterol.

The Focus is a seriously nice car on the inside, enough so that Ford engineers and marketers quietly ventured the Audi A3 and A4 as competitor. Talk about hubris. And yet, the Titanium interior is pretty artful, a sinuous composition in soft-touch materials, alloy-like painted trim, textured fabric, that piano-black plastic?assuming your Steinway is made by Mattel?and lots of electrons. The center stack is dominated by the 8-inch touch screen, above a gloss-black panel with the rotary controller for the Sony sound system (there's a smaller LCD between the gauges in the instrument cluster). The leather steering wheel has more buttons than a band uniform, offering triple redundancy for phone and audio. I think. Frankly, it would take more than a day behind the wheel to become fluent in these interfaces.

I was pleased to discover a traditional hand-brake lever to the right of the shift gate. In these uncertain times, you never know when you may have to execute a bootleg turn.

At a press event in Southern California last week, I drove two trim levels: the volume car, the SE ($17,270 MSRP), with optional 17-inch, all-season tires and five-speed manual transmission; and the Titanium sedan, with optional 18-inch summer tires, sport suspension and dual-clutch automatic transmission. In either fitment, the Focus proved to be damn crafty and athletic. The chassis feels hammer-hard and stout, paying dividends in the kind of cabin ambience you might expect in a larger and more expensive car. The ride quality is even and serene even when the asphalt isn't. The Focus's Noise-Vibration-Harshness (NVH) team just murdered it.

Fling the car into the corners and the Focus's handling is yar and well balanced; it's even tossable in a Euro-spec sort of way. The car gathers understeer as steering angles increase?it pushes like a front-drive car will, in other words, with an increasing bleating from the front tires. But transitional, corner-to-corner manners are solid and reassuring, and the electric power steering direct, linear and reasonably communicative.

The string-back glove set will appreciate the torque-vectoring system built into the front axle. Much like a mechanical limited-slip differential, torque vectoring subtly pulses the brake of the inside front wheel in a corner, directing more torque to the outside wheel, actually helping bend the car into a corner. Once there, you can go to the whip harder and sooner. Combined with the Titanium's optional 18-inch summer rubber and leaner sport suspension, the torque vectoring turns a fairly good front-driver into a fervid and stubborn little gymkhana car.

If only, alas, there was more torque to vector. The Ford chassis engineers have so outclassed the powertrain?a 2.0-liter, direct-injection four-banger with 160 horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque, and that at a cringe-y 4,450 rpm?that you can't help but walk away feeling that the car is woefully underpowered. When was a sport hatch slower to 60 than 9 seconds, after all? You may wish the manual tranny had a sixth gear or that there were steering wheel-mounted paddle shifters for the six-speed, dual-clutch automatic. The little Up/Down button on the shifter is worthless. You may tire of having to kick this thing like it's a lazy court jester to get it to move. One way or another, driving enthusiasts are likely to feel unrequited by the powertrain.

The good news is that Ford will soon offer an engine worthy of the chassis, a 250-hp turbocharged four-cylinder in a performance variant called the ST. Until then, for me, the Titanium feels a little like fool's gold.

But man, Ford sure looks like the smartest kid in class these days. And I relish the notion that the Focus, of all cars, could nip at the heels of Audi and Acura. Really. Go tell it on the mountain.

Corrections & Amplifications

The 2012 Ford Focus is available with a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. An earlier version of this column incorrectly said the manual transmission was a six-speed.

Highest-Quality Cars Of 2010
Buyers report the fewest defects in these new car models.

Porsche is having a bang-up year. Last week it earned the highest rating of any carmaker in J.D. Power and Associates' Initial Quality Survey--and that's the fourth time they've done so in five years. Earlier this spring Porsche also won top honors in JD Power's prestigious vehicle dependability study.

But that doesn't mean the Stuttgart, Germany-based manufacturer is resting on its laurels. Instead, it's deliberately calculating every move and hoping to uphold standards when it launches the new 911 Carrera Turbo S, Cayenne Hybrid, V6 Panamera and Boxster Spyder in the next year.

"I think everybody's a bit tentative and, especially in the luxury market, you have to be very tentative, you have to be very competitive," says Tony Fouladpour, a spokesman for Porsche. "You have to basically not slip up."

It's no big surprise that Porsche is receiving accolades for its high quality. But it may be shocking to hear that in 2010 the world's most reliable cars don't come from Europe: They're straight out of Detroit, Mich. For the first time ever, domestic brands as a whole earned higher initial quality scores than imports in JD Power's 2010 vehicle dependability study.

J.D. Power compiled its 2010 Initial Quality Study by surveying 82,000 buyers and lessees of new, 2010 model-year vehicles, asking them what problems they've had with their cars. The study was conducted from February to May of this year, and cars were scored based on how many problems were reported per 100 vehicles. The industry average score this year is 109, up slightly from 108 last year.

In our list of highest-quality cars we include only those cars that earned the very highest marks for quality.

Among American manufacturers, Ford performed particularly well in 2010: Twelve of the company's cars ranked within the top three in their segments, more than any other car company. And the $22,145 Mustang coupe, $25,170 Taurus sedan, and $16,290 Focus compact car all make our list of the year's highest-quality cars.

One reason for Ford's strong showing? Defect-free new launches. The redesigned Mustang and Taurus each won their respective segments in their first year out of the box. Other manufacturers also put out reliable new models: Lexus' $65,380 LS 460 and $54,070 GS both make our list, and the $51,970 Lexus GX 460 SUV won its segment. Even though Porsche's first-ever sedan, the $74,400 Panamera, didn't win its segment, it received notably high initial quality scores as well.

These initial quality scores--measured after 90 days of ownership--are significant because new models often have many more quality problems than carryover models. That's one reason why the Lexus LS has consistently been rated as the one vehicle with the absolute least amount of complaints lodged against it.

"When Lexus launched in 1990, they pretty much came in at No. 1 in the industry," says Dave Sargent, vice president of global vehicle research at J.D. Power. "The LS wasn't their only car they sold back then, but it was certainly their main vehicle."

Designing better cars in general is the first step to reducing defects, says Ford Quality communications manager Kristen Kinley, but streamlining the manufacturing process--as Ford has done in recent years, and as it's currently doing with the all-new Fiesta--has helped as well.

"The Fiestas that we're building in Europe and the ones that we're building in Mexico follow the exact identical standards, and that reduced complexity in the system has helped improve quality," she says.

The most notorious problem reported by new-car buyers? Excessive wind noise, according to Sargent. It's an admittedly subjective problem, but the "excessive" label means the noise must be unexpected and unwelcome: "If you're driving around in a 911 with the roof down, you're going to hear wind noise, but you're going to expect it."

Ultimately, even though it can sometimes be remedied by reapplying seals or readjusting doors, that extraneous noise signifies a design flaw, Sargent says.

That's precisely why Porsche and Ford shone in this year's report: Along with the Hyundai Azera, the Porsche 911 received no complaints of excessive wind noise. The Ford Fusion was among the top five vehicles with the fewest such complaints.