New Ford Focus sharpens sales expectations

2008 is the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the Ford Focus so it is timely that the ‘new’ models will start to appear in UK showrooms in January next year and deliveries to UK customers will start in February.

The latest Focus models are not totally new but the changes are far more extensive than is usual for a model range undergoing the usual mid-life update.

The Focus has been the UK’s best selling car for every year since its launch. One in 20 new cars sold in the UK is a Focus and it is the best selling car of its size in Europe.

Over 112,000 have been sold so far in 2007 and the Focus was the top selling range in the UK in 2006 with 137,694 models sold to UK buyers. The Focus was also the top selling diesel car in the UK last year with 48,929 registrations.

Winner of more than 80 awards and the only vehicle in the world to be named Car of the Year both in Europe and North America, Ford’s Focus has been something of a phenomenon since the launch of the original back in 1998 and more than 1.1 million examples have been sold in the UK to date out of a total of five million produced in Europe.

Ford has a sharper focus for 2008 with the first of the new Focus models going on sale in February. The new Focus models adopt Ford’s crisper ‘kinetic’ exterior styling philosophy coupled with enhanced interior quality and better equipment levels, for more or less the same price as the outgoing models.

This relatively new policy introduced by Ford for their latest Mondeo models in 2007 is aimed at getting customers, especially retail buyers, back to Ford and restoring pride of ownership.

To meet the needs of retail, fleet and business customers in an increasingly competitive new car market, the new Focus had to be designed and engineered to provide, sharper and distinctive and classier looks, higher specification, offer improved value for money, lower CO2 emissions and provide better fuel economy.

With on the road prices from £11,945, the new Focus is just £250 more than the equivalent outgoing model but all versions now include ESP, electronic stability programme, as standard, before it was a £250 option.

Mark Ovenden, Director Marketing Ford of Britain, said at the international press launch of the new Focus range, “We have re-focused and simplified the range so now customers have the choice of 82 variants rather than the 107 we had previously but there is an increased choice of options so customers can tailor the cars to suit their needs.”

He added, “ Petrol models account for 65 per cent of Focus sales in the UK but we expect the diesel share to increase with the introduction of our Econetic lower CO2 derivatives.

Retail customers take 35 per cent of total Focus sales in this country, but we think that share will also increase as it has with Mondeo due to the new and sharper design and added value specification.”

“In the past five-door models have been the most popular taking on average 79 per cent of total Focus sales in this country. Three-door models only account for seven per cent, four-door saloons just two per cent and estates 12 per cent, but we also see estate sales increasing in line with more customers now being attracted to estate models of this size.”

“We expect the 1.6-litre petrol models to continue to be the main sellers but the new lower CO2 1.6-litre turbodiesel models will claim an increasing share of overall sales because of the increase in fuel and taxation costs and the fact that these revised diesel units come under the proposed London Congestion Charge exemption level of 120g/km,” Ovenden added.

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