Find Reviews by Make:
Making its first appearance at Geneva is the facelifted Ford Focus, which gets the corporate schnoz, as well as the 1.0L Ecoboost three-cylinder for the North American market.
30 Comments on “Geneva 2015: Facelifted Ford Focus...”
Read all comments
The front looks gorgeous. The back looks bland though.
They’re trying to make it look like the new Fusion which is a mistake IMHO, it’s too slab-sided and blah. I prefer the current one, although I wish they would make the rear end simpler.
It’s supposed to look like the new Fusion that’s the new face of Ford. And it doesn’t look anymore slab-sided than the 2014 version.
Well they were successful, that’s what I thought it was on first glance.
Better, but still a mess. That front is bland, the sides are plain, and the rear is terrible.
Typical hack job by Ford.
Oh look, a 1.0L turbo 3cyl, be still my beating heart!
Like most facelifts, it would have been better to just age gracefully.
Are chrome wheels in again?
I was about to say, WOW chrome wheels, it’s 2002!
Seriously, those things are hideous. They look like some Autozone special you’d find on a first-gen Focus. They really detract from this show car, too – too spindly for the car’s bulk. That seems to be a common theme with newer cars; large slab sides need some rims with similar visual heft, and these don’t provide it.
I would expect the rims available on the 2015 Focus not to differ too much from what is available now. The chunky, gloss black 17″ wheels on the SE Sport will be a good fit, as well as the 18″ polished rims on the Titanium. Some of the styles on the Fusion would work as well.
Despise.
The heavy forward nose does not work with the rest of the body. Also with Fiesta.
I really miss front bumpers.
Fatface Fusion. Junior, of course.
Way back in olden times, people could customize their Beetle with Rolls Royce grilles in front and Continental-style toilet seat spares in back, but those were quickie bonnet and boot jobs. It’s more complicated today.
Still, with all those customizers at SEMA, you’d think they could find a market for custom clips, front and rear. This car could use some creative alternatives at both ends.
Update: I talked to a lawyer I know, and he said custom front and rear clips would have to incorporate the hidden bumpers and crush zone standards, requiring expensive testing, and more importantly, taking over responsibility from the manufacturers. There’s just too much liability involved.
No pics of the refreshed interior? I’m interested in seeing what they did to interiors without MFT. The current interior keeps the Focus off my list.
And please tell me those chrome wheels are not mandatory. Chrome wheels are hideous.
MFT is supposed to be seeing a return to some buttons and knobs. That’s some improvement, at least.
The Focus before this actually looked nice at most angles, the blues a nice touch, but this recent face-lift just looks weird up front, and honestly the last “face lift” was fresh enough.
Ford should focus more on polishing their engines a bit than Fusi-fying their line-up.
i hate this front end, though probably prefer it to the tiny upper grill/large lower grill of the Ecosport style front.
wonder how the gas flap is integrated now the rear light clusters are smaller
The gas flap is the same, it is just that the lights don’t follow it completely down. Autoblog has some good shots of that side of the car.
I want to like this Focus. I find it drives better than anything else in its class and I even like the looks, but I just can’t pull the trigger because of fears over reliability. How have the earlier Focus’s of this generation faired?
What is your specific concern with Focus reliability? The dual-clutch auto and MFT? Find an SE manual without MFT and you take away the biggest complaints from many people. I’ve figured out MFT, and not had an issue since 2012. The DCT is wonky, but I don’t know its failure rate.
I also disliked all the other controls in the Focus, but I’ve heard they’ve gotten some of those things sorted out with latest model year, but IDK. Ford seems completely out to lunch when it comes to user interfaces.
Other controls? Like HVAC or accessory items like window wipers and such?
I actually really like the user interface in my C-Max. Its a blending of the Escape and Focus, so its a bit differant than both.
The Focus I was in recently (2013?) with MFT had plenty of buttons for climate control and radio and pretty much anything else you would want to operate while the car was in motion. Sure, you could use the screen to do it to, but what was the point of that?
I guess I’m wonder what the griping is about MFT when you can ignore it 99% of the time anyways.
Does this imply the next look of the Escape, too?
Loss of identity will hurt Focus sales. Need to keep the car identifiable at any distance. No one wants to drive mommys car. Harks back to the 50’s designs when all cars looked alike except for size. No, no, no. (except for the sedan version which is wasted anyway).
50’s? The Germans have been doing the ‘same sausage, different lengths’ game for the past 30 years or so, with great success. One could argue that it provides some aspirational pedigree to the lesser models, while it may also detract from the exclusivity of the flagship models.
Agreed. This is NOT going to hurt Focus sales. It might even help sales.
The grill is the same but the gait, length, and form are very different. I can’t imagine most people mixing the two up. The hood profile especially looks nothing like the Fusion.
Don’t like it. Haven’t liked the Focus since the second-gen.
Ford’s small car design lost its way after the original ‘New Edge’ phase supported the success of the 1st gen Ka, Fiesta, Focus, etc. They’ve been tweaking the design ever since and it’s just getting worse and worse. Like an artist that doesn’t know when to stop messing with a painting, a once interesting picture has been turned muddy (the same thing is happening with the first-to-second gen Euro Honda Civic hatch).
It’s time Ford to stop softening curves on a design that requires hard edges, get a blank sheet of paper and start fresh.