I needed four seats at short notice on Friday so went to my usual rental place. I was pretty pleased to get a Focus, as it was a late call and not many cars left. I'd feared some sort of Chevvy Spark or Hyundai I10 so a Focus was a decent result. I keep thinking of one for a winter/sensible car so thought it'd be a good test run. What I got wasn't the standard 1.6 rental offering but the Ecoboost. A 3 cylinder, 1.0 litre TURBO I've never driven FI, would it have too much power for me?
In terms of the usual stuff, decent focus interior and spacious, everything is lightweight and easy to handle etc etc, a fine car interior (some squeaks mind) in comparison to the rest of its class IMHO. However, the engine sucks the sweat from a dead man's balls. Allegedly the turbo Ecowarrior delivers 100bhp, which is probably more than my first car, a 1.2 Clio. However, it was totally insipid to drive. Now I realise Zed owners probably aren't their target market, and it was fine around town, but this is not enough to get me juicy. My old Clio was so much more fun in the city.
The weirdest thing is, I did a run over to Sheffield, so a selection of city, motorway and A road action (snake pass rules BTW). The (majority mileage) motorway stretch was appalling, I had to shift down to third to overtake anything, an incline (not a hill) causes asthmatic wheezing and when I got sat behind Fred & Mable on snake pass I had literally nothing to use to get passed their Ford Ka safely. The worst bit is, it averaged 40.3 mpg, for the whole journey! Now where's the bloody Eco in that? The Shark returns 30mpg on the same run, at similar (top) speeds, yet makes me gush just when I start her up and hear that V6.
Who is going to buy a car with rubbs performance but with only 40mpg as the reward? I was expecting 55 mpg at least. I don't get how they think people will be enticed into these small engine turbod Eco cars, when there's no juice when you floor it and no spectacular mileage figures to please your wallet - it's the worst of both worlds.
Do you think this is the way all cars are eventually going to go? Is the Zed the last Tyrannosaurus Rex waiting to become extinct and replaced by the Donkey