Ford Focus Estate - Reliability & safety

This Ford Focus is based on entirely new underpinnings, promising to be stronger, and far less likely to be involved in a collision in the first place than the old model, thanks to advanced driver aids. What’s more concerning is Ford’s low scores for customer satisfaction and reliability, according to Ford owners that have filled out our Driver Power survey.

Ford Focus Estate reliability

According to our latest Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, the number of Ford owners reporting a fault within the first year of ownership was higher than average, at over 21%. Ford’s result in our manufacturers chart isn’t impressive, as it ranked 25th out of 29 brands. Even more worryingly, the Focus failed to make our list of the Top 75 cars in 2022; in 2021 the best scores were for practicality and running costs, as no other aspect scored well.

Safety

The latest Focus has been designed to be incredibly tough, with a 40% higher ability to absorb front impacts than before, but the Holy Grail is to avoid a collision happening at all.

Ford’s efforts have been concentrated here, and ‘Evasive Steering Assist’ is one of the key new pieces of active safety technology. Working in conjunction with standard autonomous emergency braking, this can help you steer around a stationary or slow-moving car if a collision is imminent. Ford has also added pedestrian and cyclist recognition to the braking system, so the Focus can warn you or brake itself, even if it thinks someone is about to step out in front of you in the dark.

It all helped it to achieve five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests, with a high score of 96% for adult occupant protection.

Motorway drivers are likely to love the adaptive cruise control that can automatically stop the car in traffic, while the reversing camera now has a wide-angle lens to make reversing near traffic safer.