Ford Focused For Decades: Here’s Why It Disappeared – Jalopnik

The Ford Focus was first launched in Europe in 1998, before making its US debut two years later in 2000. You could get it in several styles, including a sedan or station wagon, but perhaps the most popular version was the hatchback, which also found a large audience in Europe. The automaker eagerly pushed the car toward younger drivers, but its youth-targeted ad campaign may have been a bit much considering the cringe-inducing Ford Focus brochures of the early 2000s.

The early 2000s also saw the release of the SVT hatchback version, which featured a manual gearbox and a 2.0-liter four-cylinder under the hood that delivered 170 horsepower. This significantly increased the output over other iterations. The Ford Focus was affordable, fun to drive and sold well in the US Edmunds showing that Ford moved a total of 245,922 units in 2012.

However, in the following years, the Ford Focus began to decline in popularity in the United States. As sales continued to trend downward, Ford pulled the plug in 2018, but only in the US market. The Focus lived on in Europe until the end of 2025. So if the public didn’t buy the Focus that often, what were they driving? During the production period of the Focus, a new player in the industry emerged dramatically: the crossover. The growing popularity of crossovers, as well as other factors such as Ford’s EV investments, caused the automaker to discontinue the Focus.

Another advantage the Focus had early in its run was generous fuel economy, with even the first SVT performance model achieving 28 mpg city and 36 mpg highway figures. According to Car and driver In testing, the 2018 Focus achieved 38 mpg while gently sipping fuel and saving drivers money. However, advances in engine design have produced increasingly efficient vehicles in recent years, allowing all types of cars (including crossovers) to benefit. Take, for example, a popular crossover like the Honda CR-V. The turbocharged gasoline engine version gets an EPA-estimated 28 mpg in the city and 33 mpg on the highway, while the hybrid iteration gets a combined 40 mpg.

It was not only in the United States where Ford made significant changes, but also in Europe. In 2024, CEO Jim Farley told the British company Car magazine“We’re moving out of the boring car industry and into the iconic car industry. We’ve always competed at the heart of the passenger car market, which hasn’t worked out so well for Mondeo, Focus and Fiesta.” According to Engine12024 wasn’t a great year for Ford in Europe, as it only managed to capture 3.3% of the market. Fortunately for the Focus, it gained a good reputation during production, and will be remembered fondly by many in the US and abroad. Not all hatchbacks have received such acclaim, such as the Fiesta ST, one of your picks for the worst hot hatch of all time.