The Ford Focus nearly lost its name to a German magazine
Ford meant to keep calling its new small family car the Escort, settling on Focus only in early 1998. That July a Cologne court, acting for the publisher Burda, told Ford it could not use the name in Germany because a Burda magazine already had it. The dispute was settled, and the car arrived on time.
The Focus grew out of chief executive Alexander Trotman's Ford 2000 plan, which aimed to design one compact car and sell it around the world. German and British engineers at Ford of Europe did most of the work, with Rose Mary Farenden managing the project at Dunton. Its supple suspension and sharp handling won it European Car of the Year for 1999, and North America got its own version for the 2000 model year.
Performance models followed. The first Focus RS of 2002 was developed by Tickford Engineering, which updated or redesigned up to 70% of the parts, and only 4,501 were built in Saarlouis, with 2,147 of them sold in Britain. The second generation of 2004 grew noticeably longer and wider, and some critics felt it had lost a little of the original's poise. The 2005 ST borrowed a five-cylinder turbo engine from Volvo. A third generation reunited the European and American cars in 2011.
In rallying, Colin McRae gave the Focus World Rally Car its first win on the 1999 Safari Rally, after the team's debut in Monte Carlo ended in exclusion over an illegal water pump. Run by M-Sport of Cockermouth under Malcolm Wilson, the second-generation car brought Ford the manufacturers' title in 2006, its first since 1979, and again in 2007. In the British Touring Car Championship, a Focus running on liquefied petroleum gas scored the fuel's first win.
Ford dropped nearly all its cars in North America in 2018 to concentrate on trucks and SUVs, and in 2022 announced the end of the Focus as it shifted toward electric and crossover models. The last were built in 2025.
Source: Ford Focus
