My Biased Review of the 2016 Ford Focus SE

I needed to get a car a few months ago, and I have to admit I'm a lousy car shopper. I rarely shop around, and I barely bargain with the dealer when I get there. When car dealers see me come in they probably think to themselves, "whoa here's a whale ready to be harpooned." When I bought the Ford Focus from the dealer it wasn't any different.

The car was a used 2016 Ford Focus, but it only had 15,000 kilometers, that's around 9,000 miles for those who need to do the conversion. It seemed to be a good deal, so I said to myself screw it, let's get this car.

Previously, I was driving a 2010 Kia Forte Koup EX, until someone drove into me on the expressway. I have to say that the Forte was a great car. It did everything that I ever wanted in a car. I would have held onto it for much longer if it wasn't for the accident.

When my car insurance allowed me to rent a 2018 Chevy Cruz, I was relieved. Although, there were a few issues with that car, that I noticed. It had four doors, so that pillar between the front and rear door was a weird thing to get over. I hated having that in my way of viewing things. Also it had a high tail, so the rear was kind of hard to view. On the plus side it had all the bells and whistles that made me feel like my old Forte was a dinosaur of a car.

My car rental was running out and I got the Ford Focus. You're probably asking if I took a test drive, and yes I did. When I first test drove the car it was in the middle of winter, so I was able to see how it handled. It felt more nimble than the Chevy Cruz I had. The vision was much better, as well. I could see through the rear much easier, as the tail wasn't sloped high like the Cruz. It had all the bells and whistles that the Cruz had as well. Unfortunately, I did notice that the torque for the car wasn't that great. It felt slow on launch, but I was just in a crazy accident and didn't think I'd need the extra acceleration. On paper it looked good, 160 horsepower is a lot for a compact car, but with no torque that number means nothing.

So I drove the car for a little while, and I've noticed things. First off, I can't get over that dumb pillar between the front and rear doors on four door cars! It's really annoying. I have to tell all people driving four door cars to drive a coupe for a little while, and notice how much easier it is to merge into traffic on right hand turns. It's also much easier to get out of a coupe than it is for a four door car. I used to have the luxury of just turning and getting out, now I feel like I'm cramped getting out.

I have some small gripes particular about the Focus interior design. So the entertainment buttons on the steering wheel are located on the right hand side of the wheel. Why? This doesn't make sense, because the radio nobs are just a foot away from the steering wheel on the right hand side. All the other cars that I drove have them on the left side of the wheel. This was a great annoyance, especially since I drive a manual. My left hand is always on the wheel the right hand shifts the gears. How did they not think of this? The left hand side of the wheel controls the gauge cluster info. Once a driver fixes that they don't usually do other things with it. It's fixed, and I don't really play around with it anymore. What a waste of buttons.

I have to say that the detailed information that I get on the gauge cluster is pretty interesting and fun, but they can be somewhat distracting when you're constantly looking at the fuel consumption of the car.

I love the sync system that I have on the Ford Focus. It pretty much does everything I want it to do, except control the different songs I have on my phone, without physically going to my phone and changing things like genre, album etc. That was pretty annoying. It does however allow you to change to the next or previous song if you want. It also works with google maps to give you directions. The Sync system did, however take a little while for me to understand all the nuances. I would consider myself pretty understanding of tech stuff, so that's worrisome for me to have to take so long to figure it all out. Using USB for music is the best, but placing all your songs on the USB stick can be a bit of a hassle. Not too much of a hassle, but remember when you want new songs you'll have to upload those songs onto the USB stick.

I found the button placement of the unlock and lock a little awkward. This is a really minor thing, but I like to manually lock all the doors, instead of using that dumb key fob all the time.

The rear seats are strange. You need to actually take off the headrests to put down the rear seats all the way, if you want to extend your trunk. I've never had to do that before. I wonder what they were thinking when they made that thought. The trunk is not too, big but I didn't really need it to be that big.

A cool feature that I like is the rear camera for reversing. I really like this feature, but the camera gets dirty all the time. I'll have to go clean it every so often because this camera is in the rear, and the tires are constantly kicking up dirt into the camera. Maybe the camera would have been better higher up, rather than so close to the ground.

Overall, despite these minor gripes, I do like the Ford Focus. It gets the job done. I think, for an everyday car, it's great. It's not fancy, but why do I need a crazy car when I'm worried about other cars crashing into me constantly. I'll give the Ford Focus a 7.5 out of 10. It serves its purpose, but nothing more. That's fine by me, and I think it would serve the needs of pretty much 70 percent of the population.