2017 Ford Focus ST A DoubleClutch.ca Review with T.H.
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00:00Here is my double clutch magazine test car for this week, the 2017 Ford Focus ST, a serious
00:19contender in hot hatch world.
00:22This one is finished in race red, and I think it looks pretty good.
00:38As many of you know, I am a big fan of the Focus RS, so I was eager to give its little
00:43brother a go.
00:45This is going to be a good old-fashioned road review, and when you're done here, you can
00:48go over and read my written review on DoubleClutch.ca.
00:51I'll put a link to that in the description.
00:53But for today, I'll give you my main points, starting with the interior, which frankly
00:57doesn't go so well for the ST.
01:00But when I take it for a drive on the road, things start looking up.
01:07This car is something that I'm going to be very hard on.
01:10Sorry, Ford.
01:11I'm going to be pretty aggressive with certain aspects of it, because I want it to be good.
01:17Because in Canada, we don't have very many options for hot hatchbacks, and this car has
01:22a lot of potential to be very, very good.
01:25Also, it costs $37,000.
01:27Or, wait.
01:30$34,998.
01:33That's a lot of money.
01:34So, right off the bat, the interior of the car has got this weird three-dimensional shape,
01:39which I'm not entirely sure that I like.
01:41It kind of is coming out at you at all angles, and it's a little bit claustrophobic, if I'm
01:45honest.
01:46It's been in the same design for quite a while, and let's just be upfront about it.
01:51It really, really needs a refresh.
01:54There's a lot of hard plastics.
01:55The design is not aesthetically appealing.
01:57Yeah, I don't know.
02:00Honestly, this has got the carbon fiber package, by the way, which has carbon fiber bits here.
02:05It has some carbon fiber up by the dials on the dash.
02:10A great carbon fiber shift knob, carbon fiber handles.
02:14I think there's some more carbon fiber here somewhere else, but I don't remember where.
02:17Now, let's go right to the seating position, because I've tested the Ford Focus RS, as
02:21many of you know, and it has a terrible seating position.
02:25It probably has something to do with the all-wheel drive.
02:27You're super high up in the air.
02:29This car, though, I can sit nice and low.
02:31Okay, so I like every single thing about the seating position in this car, except for two
02:36things.
02:37Okay?
02:38It's almost perfect.
02:39The steering wheel tilts and telescopes, comes right up my chest.
02:42I can get really low in the car.
02:44The seat back comes up.
02:45Here's my head on the headrest perfectly.
02:47Now, the pedal placing is fine, except for the fact that I can't heel-toe easily at all,
02:54because my foot hits the firewall when I try and pivot, and the pedals aren't close enough
02:59together.
03:00Now, that's not the biggest issue.
03:01The biggest issue is if I have the steering wheel in the right position, when I go to
03:04bring my leg up to heel-toe, I actually hit my knee on the underside of the steering column,
03:08which is annoying.
03:10As for the rest of the interior, it's okay.
03:13The center screen in the gauge cluster, it took me a while to understand why there's
03:17like two trip options that you toggle through here, and then there's like an eco mode, which
03:22you go over to the right.
03:23I haven't bothered with it.
03:24The one redeeming feature of the center thing here is that it has your speed if you want
03:28it, and it also has a screen that shows you a fuel economy and miles left in the tank
03:35and instant fuel economy all at the same screen, which is rare for some reason, and that's
03:39really cool.
03:41Now, the touch screen in the center here is too far away.
03:44If I go like this, I can't touch it, okay?
03:47With my back on the seat in a proper seating position, can't reach the screen, have to
03:50bend forward.
03:51It's also recessed really far in, so I kind of bonked my finger on the dashboard.
03:55I just turned the rear wipers on, and now there's the front wipers on.
03:59Okay, so the interface is okay.
04:04It's fairly intuitive, I guess.
04:06Why are the wipers on?
04:07All the wipers are on.
04:08What did I do?
04:09Seriously?
04:10How do I?
04:11What's happening?
04:12Forward!
04:13Okay.
04:14The screen looks like it was designed as a slight update to Windows 95 in terms of like
04:23the color and the graphics.
04:26It's that the touch screen is fairly quick, but sometimes it's a little bit laggy, actually,
04:31weirdly.
04:32And I have a sound button so that I can go right to my sound adjustment menu, and I would
04:35have preferred like a fast track to phone or nav as an actual physical button down there
04:39instead of touch screen only.
04:42Now let's go right to the seats.
04:43Okay, I'm not done complaining, I'm sorry.
04:46Okay, so Recaros, yes, lots of motorsport heritage, lovely, right?
04:50You can see the ST there embroidered in the back.
04:55The top half of the seat is perfect, hugs me really, really well, super comfortable.
05:00Now, the bottom half of the seat, it's like they just opened the door and poured bolsters
05:05into the car and forgot to actually add a seat, because I sit on top of the bolsters.
05:11I don't have a very big badonkadonk, but I actually don't fit very well in these seats
05:16at all, and I went from being totally comfortable and having no back problems to having to take
05:21some Advil in a four-hour period after sitting in these seats.
05:24Now, from what I've read online, for every single person who hates these seats, there's
05:28five people that love them, so it must just be personal preference.
05:31On the track, they'd be great, very similar to the Focus RS seats, and you'd be super
05:34comfortable living in them on the track, but for me, I do not like these at all.
05:40They don't fit to the point where there's actually some people on the forums that have
05:43taken the seat out, stripped off the bolsters, removed the plastic, and replaced it with
05:47foam of the same shape, because they're so uncomfortable, okay?
05:50So here's the thing.
05:52For every single thing that Ford, in my opinion, got wrong with this car, they got something
05:56very, very right.
05:59Excuse the terrible pun, but Ford's focus with this car was clearly pure enjoyment.
06:05252 horsepower, 270 pound-feet of torque, it's more than enough.
06:11Honestly, it really is, and the driving engagement is absolutely bang-on.
06:16Clutch pedal feel, exactly perfect, in my opinion.
06:19There's a distinctive point when you overcome the pressure plate.
06:22The shifter feels great.
06:23I absolutely love this carbon-fiber shift knob, way better than the previous one they
06:26had in the car.
06:27The shifter location relative to the steering wheel is absolutely perfect, because I don't
06:32have very much distance to travel between my hand and the shifter, and this is actually
06:36rare.
06:37For some reason, with the armrest in a comfortable position for me to sit, I don't actually hit
06:40it with my arm when I'm shifting, because the shifter is up high enough, okay?
06:45Steering feel, it's really, really good.
06:48Some of the best electric steering that I have seen, similar to the BRZ in terms of
06:52feel and feedback, it's better than the Golf GTI, in my opinion.
06:57The Focus ST has a sound symposer that pipes intake noise into the cabin at certain RPMs.
07:05Some say that this noise is artificial or fake.
07:09Even if it is, I don't care.
07:11It sounds really, really good.
07:12People would get really up in arms about that, oh, it's not authentic noise.
07:16It makes it fun.
07:17I don't know, do you guys go to the movie theaters and sit there and go like, whoa,
07:20this isn't real.
07:21How do you know this isn't real?
07:22This is a fake thing.
07:23Why are we watching this?
07:24No, nobody does that, so I don't know why you care in a car.
07:28It's theater.
07:29It's fun.
07:30I like the sound.
07:31It's loud.
07:32It's very satisfying.
07:33Listen to the downshift.
07:34Cool.
07:35Downshifts are super easy, by the way, right?
07:39Revs rise really quick, down into second, no problem.
07:43Literally, I drove off the lot in this car and nailed every single downshift ever since
07:48I got the car.
07:50I'm pretty satisfied with that.
07:53Tons of torque.
07:58The ride is a little bit harsh, but I don't really care that much.
08:03It's not as bad as the Focus RS, which is ridiculously hard, but it could be softer.
08:09Yes, it could be more compliant, but I mean, it's sporty.
08:12It doesn't matter.
08:13And the trade-off for that is you get absolutely fantastic turn in.
08:17You can chuck this car into the corner, right?
08:20So just response, it's so flat.
08:23It turns in really aggressively.
08:26And yes, it's a front-wheel drive car, so you're not going to get power oversteer like
08:29you would in the Focus RS or a rear-wheel drive car.
08:32However, the chassis is set up really, really well.
08:36So if you turn into the corner aggressively on a trailing throttle, like a lift-off throttle,
08:40you're off the throttle or you touch the brakes in the middle of the corner, the car rotates
08:43happily.
08:44It's pleased to do it, right?
08:46Then you get on the throttle and it pulls you out of the corner.
08:48No problem.
08:49Now, I've got a couple of different settings.
08:51I've got a sport setting.
08:52I just tap the traction control button once and it pops up there and tells me that I am
08:58now in sport.
09:02And then if I hold it down for like five seconds, it turns the traction control off completely.
09:07Sport mode turns the traction control off but leaves the stability control on.
09:10It will let the car rotate but will catch the slide if things get out of hand.
09:16I do get quite a lot of torque steer.
09:19The car has quite a lot of torque steer.
09:20It is a front-wheel drive car with 270 pound-feet of torque.
09:23There's not much you're going to be able to do about that.
09:32Braking performance.
09:33I can't comment on that because every time I brake hard in the car, I use up the grip
09:38of the snow tires super easily.
09:40So I can't really tell you quite what it's like under braking.
09:43It is a very sharp brake pedal feel initially.
09:45Good bite.
09:46But then for me, in these conditions, it's nine degrees out right now, Celsius, and I'm
09:51on snow tires and it just kind of feels like I use up the grip really easily and the car
09:55gets kind of squirrely into braking.
09:57Even on snows, the focus was very sharp and turned in like a serious sports car.
10:03Although the Fiesta is still a little bit more nimble.
10:08The Fiesta ST is a little bit more nippy and you can flick it around a little bit more,
10:12but this has got quite a decent amount of space.
10:15Except for me up here.
10:16I feel very claustrophobic, as I said before.
10:18But otherwise, this is a really practical, very fun car.
10:24But I urge you to try out its obvious competitors.
10:28Consider the Subaru WRX, consider the Golf GTI, right, because they all have their advantages
10:34and disadvantages.
10:35If you were going to ask me to choose right now between this and the WRX, I would still
10:41go with the WRX personally, just because all-wheel drive is amazing and the interior of the WRX
10:47is nicer.
10:48I can't believe I just said that the interior of a WRX is nicer.
10:58By the end of the week, I had grown very fond of the Focus ST.
11:02It has loads of personality and it's truly exciting when you drive it hard.
11:07Interior and seats aside, this is a good hot hatch.
11:10Overall, even though parts of it didn't jive with me, I would still have fun driving one
11:14of these every day.
11:16When Ford updates the platform in the future, as long as they still prioritize driving experience,
11:21I could easily see myself owning one of these.