At any one time, in any city of the United Kingdom you care to choose, at least one hundred thousand drivers will be slightly irritated by the intermittent beep of the Ford Focus' 'the door is open' / 'you haven't done up your seat belt' / 'it's a bit cold outside' tone. They may also be bored to tears with the plain interior, the uninspiring plastics and the general feeling of ennui that envelops any Focus owner. So why on Earth do people keep buying them? Ford's tradition for outselling the competition has slipped slightly on an international scale. The Ford dynasty now sits 4th in the table of highest selling car manufacturers behind Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen despite holding second place for something close to a million years.
This has probably got more to do with globalisation, out-sourcing and recession as opposed to Ford making a colossal engineering boob. Nevertheless, it's an interesting statistic considering that the Ford Focus is absolutely everywhere! If you stand on any high street during an average Saturday afternoon, you will be passed by a variation on the Focus theme roughly twice every second. I use the term 'variation on the Focus theme' as Ford have pulled the oldest car engineering trick out of the bag; by adding a couple of letters to the Focus badge, you can release a new edition and extend the car's lifespan limitlessly. Nobody actually knows (or cares) what "Zetec", "ST", or "C-MAX" actually means, but they continue to buy the Focus in droves.
Their only minor concern is that is costs an extra £12 to get an ashtray and a cigarette lighter fitted. The reason why the Ford Focus outnumbers people by at least nine to one in this country is a relatively simple twofold paradigm; the Focus provides quality and value for money. In many ways it is the automotive equivalent of Tesco; popping up here and there in a stealthy manner, hoping no one will notice that it is slowly taking over the world. In these economically dire times, the public are demanding the best possible vehicle for the lowest possible price. The days of affluence, reckless spending and an insistence on remaining de rigeur at all times are long gone. Here to stay are the days of huddling round a solitary burning coal for warmth, eating cold beans to save on energy bills and wearing your grandmother's hand-me-downs because you can no longer afford Levi's.
