Farewell Ford Focus

Yes, it was time to say goodbye to our Ford Focus Mk2.5, traded in for the KIA cee'd you will find detailed elsewhere hereabouts. I can't say I was sorry to see it go. Never bonded with it, somehow.

But as you can (almost) see here, it looks as good on the day of departure as it did in 2008 when it arrived all shiny and new.

Well... if you could see closer, you'd spot a lot of parking dents, and most of the Ford badges have corroded, which was quite annoying.

But generally speaking, looking good and the inside was unblemished, mostly. It had 89,369 when we handed it over, all done by us.

So... why the lack of enthusiasm for this car, which it has to be said, never let us down and returned a healthy 54mpg average over its entire life?

Well. Again, as detailed elsewhere here, it had followed on from a very similarly spec'd Astra, and that's the problem, it wasn't as good as the Astra. That car served us to about 130k miles, and was less trouble. I've had a few Fords, and I have to say that they've not been particularly well screwed together, in my opinion. Around the 70k mile mark the Focus started to rattle a lot and feel a bit 'loose', and that had happened in my previous Escort too. But the Astra was as solid as new over a longer distance.

And the Focus had suffered a couple of very costly 'mishaps' along the way, that have left a bad feeling, firstly about Ford, and secondly about my local Ford dealer. To the point that I would imagine it unlikely I'll ever by a Ford again. Sorry Ford.

The first disaster was the Fusebox saga, again, a post about that here. Turns out this marque of Focus has a design flaw that allows condensation caused by the air-con to drip onto the fusebox, corroding the terminals and causing electrical failure. I am not by any means the only sufferer from this problem, but Ford remain in denial - and are happy to extract upwards of £650 to put it right from your hapless owner.

And then there was my local dealer in Llangefni, who when I asked them to investigate a steering wheel wobble diagnosed the cause as drive-shafts, replaced them at huge cost, handed the car back to me - still with the wheel wobble. After much negotiation I got the massive bill down to £400. I then took the car to ATS and they balanced the wheels very carefully and the wobble was gone. As was my £400 and two perfectly good drive shafts. Epic fail, W R Davies, and I will never be back.

On the up side though, it went well, it gave good economy, it's smart looking, it started first time every time, and never let us down. It is a very nice red colour. It was quiet for a diesel, and handled very well.

It just never floated our boat, somehow. Good luck to the new owner, who I saw driving it on this very day. I expect it will serve you well. Just don't take it to Llangefni to get it serviced!

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KIA pro_cee'd SE 1.6 CRDi 126bhp 6-speed with ISG

Technically, the title of this piece is the title of my new car. Catchy, eh? When talking about it, I tend to call it "the KIA", or the Ceed, or the Pro Ceed maybe. Not, possibly the best car name I've ever come across, but it would be shallow to criticize the car itself for this shortfall.

No, because it's a jolly nice car. The missus and I visited our local KIA dealer, for the first time, to view a second had motor spotted on t'internet. It turned out to be disappointing - but we made the fatal error of actually going in to the the new car showroom. That new car smell... ahhhh.

We sat at a desk with the salesman and discussed options on new KIAs, specifically a Ceed. Sorry Cee'd. But my eye was drawn to the vision you see to the left here. Bit of paper in the windscreen read, "£4000 off". Hmmmm.

Well bless me if the next thing I knew, the darn thing was in my drive, with its keys in my pocket.

I'd been in the market for a new car for a while, as our Focus (about which I have posted) was showing signs of becoming unreliable. The Focus had been a disappointment over its lifetime with us, certainly not as good as its predecessor, an Astra. So, I had been looking at Astra GTCs, which are really nice looking cars. But a little out of our price range it transpired. But here was a looky-likey, the KIA equivalent of the GTC, the designation 'Pro' indicating the two door coupe version of the popular Ceed.

It was 'cheap' because it's not quite the current model and they wanted rid of it. Fine by me. It's loaded with toys and of course comes with that most warm and fuzzy-feeling bonus of a 7 year warranty. I even got a 3 year servicing deal thrown in. Magic.

It's a 126 bhp diesel (£30 road tax), with ISG - which is the Stop/Start system which frankly I could do without. It's got Climate Control, key-less entry, hill assist, electrically adjustable lumbar seats, and an awesome dashboard with fabulous Sat-nav, USB connection, Bluetooth, CD/Radio, and you can even talk to it. The steering wheel is covered in buttons for all that, plus cruise control and speed limit, and adjustable steering. Disk brakes all round, and stability control. Folding door mirrors. Headlights that see round corners. Auto dipping mirror. And a reversing camera with parking sensors. Phew.

There may be other things... I forget. Anyway... it's excellent. How does it go? Well, still running it in, but the signs are good. It handles beautifully, and the 'Sport' setting on the steering really is welcome when pressing on. It has 6 gears, which to me is one too many, and the dash is almost always trying to get me to change up - not always correctly IMHO. It cruises effortlessly at motorway speeds hardly ticking over. You wouldn't know it was a diesel except when idling - and even then it is quite refined.

After two fill ups, the fuel consumption is admittedly a tad disappointing, 50 MPG, but really the engine must be tight and I'm hoping for better things to come, because we've not exactly been caning it so far, so it should have done better I would have thought.

Time will tell I guess. So far so good. And the promise is that it really shouldn't cost a lot to run it for the next few years. Fingers crossed then.

As is obvious, it's early days with this car. I will write more as time goes by.

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