XR5 Replaced with a Honda Civic

[Skid Marx]

I'm in the stocks in the village square and you are invited to throw rotten fruit at me while pretty girls point and laugh.

You see, I bought an XR5 Focus back in May 2010 and at first I loved it. The motor was (and still is) the best donk I've ever owned. The seats were Recaro leather and super good. It stuck to the road like a slot car. Great.

BUT - a slowly growing list of annoyances eventually drove me (when it was working!) to get rid of it.

It often just plain wouldn't start. The keyless system would lock up. New batteries, holding the key tab next to the column hub, getting out of the thing and getting back in - all no good. You just had to wait until it was ready.

Horribly slow gearbox. Such a great motor mated with such a truck of a gearbox. I hoped it would loosen up but it didn't.

Clutch that bit like a dog. Stalled it a couple of times like a learner. It never got any smoother.

Turning circle was like that of a much bigger car and made tight spot parking a test.

Air conditioning was a joke. Utterly pathetic in hot weather. I often found it more pleasant to simply roll down the windows than rely on the air con for any relief. Ford's explanation was it was a German car and because of Europe's milder summers, I shouldn't expect a super cold air conditioner. This wasn't even mildly cold and besides, I've been in parts of Europe like Greece and Italy when it's been as hot as here in Perth. Ford said I would love the heating system when the cold came. The cold came. I then found that the windscreen demister was a silly as the cooling system. No matter what combination of settings (full hot, full cold, rear windows down, recirculate, external air etc etc) the windscreen stayed foggy for about 20 minutes on near zero mornings.

CD player sounded like a badly compressed MP3 after the motor had done more than about an hour of continuous driving. This was one of those things Ford couldn't check during the many times I took it back for warrantee claims.

Side window seals leaked. Not a lot, but for a new car to have water dribbling down the insides in mild rain is **** poor.

Incredible tire wear. Due to the fact it drank premium I drove it quite lightly, yet I noticed that I would be soon be needing new tires after only about 14,000ks. Glad I didn't thrash it.


So, after a particularly bad week with it, I drive to a Honda dealer and swapped it for a new bog standard Civic VTi auto. Steel wheels, cloth trim, no rear wiper, no information system, no variable intermittent wipers etc. However, I DID get a much better quality car.

The air con and heating system knocks the crap out of the Focus. A much lower powered motor drives a much better air con. It's a slush-box but it's one of the best autos I've ever driven. Honda's 'grade logic' system is quite good and enables you to get better control over things than I would have thought. Visibility is great. It has little 'quarter windows' which I thought were a gimmick at first but are actually very useful. While it's a slower car, it is quite quick enough for around town and suburbs. It is so much quieter than the Focus that it seems slower than it is. The Focus would kill it for acceleration at speeds over about 90 ks, but below that it's quite sufficient. The fit and finish is typical Honda - flawless. No leaks or rattles. It's only 7 months old and nothing has gone wrong yet, but by 7 months with the Focus, I already had a list of problems and warrentee claims. It drinks standard juice, has a full sized spare, a turning circle of 10.6 metres, everything works as it should and the buttons and controls are all the exactly the right spot and feel 'just right' to use.

I'm angry that Ford had a car that was so close to being utterly perfect and yet they let it all down by poor quality and design that was never quite right.