2008 Ford Focus

I recently rented a 2008 Ford Focus SE sedan for a week, and here are my impressions.  The car covers the basics rather well - peppy, fuel-efficient engine, responsive 4-speed automatic transmission, adequate brakes, perky handling, smooth yet taut ride.  However, Ford clearly took some short-cuts which make the car uncompetitive in the compact car class, and in some ways not as good as the previous model.  Interior plastics are hard and cheap.  No rear head-rests, although that is changing for 2009.  Cruise control and ABS are not standard.  Rear brakes are drums, not discs.  Steering wheel does not telescope.  Front seats do not go up and down (that, too, may be changing for 2009).  Exterior aesthetics are questionable, although I found they grew on me over time.  Luckily, the silly, fake side grills are gone in 2009.  Interior space is pretty good on the whole - I'm 6'5" and I could fit comfortably in the front seats, although headroom in the back seat was worse because of some bump-outs in the ceiling.  My wife did not have any headroom issues (since she is 5'4") but she found the cabin too narrow, compared to her old VW Golf.  Trunk space was very good and better than its souped-up sibling, the Mazda3.  Gas mileage was good at 32.5 MPG overall, with mostly highway driving.  I think the choice to buy this car comes down to price - with employee pricing and cash back it might be worth it, if all you care about is simple and fuel-efficient transportation with decent driving characteristics.  If not, the Japanese and Korean competitors are more complete packages.

Update:  I just rented a 2009 Focus SES with automatic transmission and put about 700 miles on it.  Some of the deficiencies of the 2008 model have been corrected, including side fins (gone) and rear head rests (added), and the driver's seat is now height-adjustable.  Interior room is still impressive for this class, especially in the front.  Ergonomics are still lacking in certain ways - no comfortable armrests in the right places, front head rests are too hard and protruding, steering wheel too far away if you have the seat all the way back.  The SES adds a level of sportiness - rear stabilizer bar and bigger wheels with lower-profile tires add to road-holding abilities.  Engine and transmission are the same, good for a four-cylinder, but not outstanding.  Still no shiftable feature on the automatic - you can turn off overdrive on a long hill, but the effect is fairly minimal.  The low range is too low for normal driving.  Fuel economy was about 30.5 overall.  Once again, a worthy daily driver if you can get a rock-bottom price.