The previous oil change I had called in and asked them to look at a rattle in the front end. They agreed. I dropped the car off, they called me -- the oil change was done, and they did detect the rattle. Awesome, what's wrong with it? Well, we don't know, you need to make an appointment for that.
Isn't me calling in before the oil change and saying it has an issue, planning when to bring it by, making an appointment?
I put it off 'till the next oil change.
THAT was an engaging experience.
So, the rattle was still there. The car also wouldn't ever warm up. I could drive down the highway, and with the heater on, the motor would never reach normal operating temperature. So even on pure-highway, ~60mph drives where I should get around 40mpg, got junk. My average was in the 20s. The car would sit at about 25% up the temp gauge, where normal operating temp is really close to 50%. Seems to be a thermostat problem to me, but definitely an issue to have a car running hours and hours without ever reaching operating temp.
So, rattle, and temperature issues. Also, the driver's door was sticking. I took it in and 'made an appointment', this time communicating extremely directly that it should be considered an appointment so they didn't get confused. They delayed me two weeks and had me drop the car off.
I dropped it off, and got a ride back to work. Then they started calling me. They told me they couldn't find the issues. I argued. They said they couldn't duplicate the problem of the door sticking all the time, the thermostat seems fine to them, and there was no rattle. I argued more. They said they had someone else try and couldn't get it to do anything wrong. We hung up after I argued, and they called later to tell me they had another guy drive it to no useful effect.
None of these issues were rare, and all of them were meaningful issues with the car. When you buy a brand new car, a dealer should want to fix all three very aggressively.
I told them to get the car ready for me to pick up, I'd take it to another dealer that might actually fix something.
I went in to pick it up, and the service guy I was working with, Tony, who'd been condescending the entire time, asked if I wanted to speak with one of the mechanics who'd driven the car. Obviously what he wanted was for me to say 'oh, a certified mechanic doesn't think anything is wrong, so I must be crazy'. Which is ridiculous, but there's no other reason I can come up with to offer it.
I said no, and he said well, I could speak to the assistant service department manager, Don. That sounded more useful. I decided to chat with Don.
Don started the conversation towing the line about there being nothing wrong with the car that they can fix if they can't duplicate it. I explained that I had heard that about a dozen times, and understood it, but the problems with the car were pretty consistent and needed to be fixed. We argued about it a while, and he actually became helpful. As a matter of fact, when he first looked at the car, he immediately agreed the driver's door was sticking.
The thermostat was also an issue he agreed to work with me on. We made inroads and got the thermostat replaced. (Unfortunately this didn't solve it, so I have to assume Ford designed the thermostats improperly for the Focus, leaving all of them running improperly in 0-15F weather).
They never could find the rattle, which appeared for me the next day and stayed around.
Lastly, the Focus has an automatic transmission no one wants to deal with. So people are complaining all over the internet, and they're dumping their Focuses off with low miles, almost new, into the market. Flooding the market with cheap, low-mileage focuses. Because of that, the 'new car' sting you take when driving a car off the lot went from a few grand, and then a decline, to the car losing over TWO THIRDS of its value in about a year.
Blissfully, I traded off the Ford for another make of vehicle, at a mere ~$12,000 loss ($5,400 upside down on my loan)to me, and can now move on with life.
You may think $5,400 is a lot of money to throw away for basically nothing, but compared to having to spend your whole life trying to get Baxter Ford to make your car operate properly, it was a bargain. Sad that a new car could lose -so much- value so quickly, massively compounding the stress and frustration of the situation, but even with that additional strain it was worth it.
There's good news, though. You don't have to make the same mistake. Avoid Baxter Ford, avoid the Ford Focus, and after I've owned almost a dozen of them, I have to say - avoid Ford entirely. There's no reason to have faith in Ford restricting their dealerships to those that do good business - quite the opposite.
For anyone who avoids the immense about of stress and frustration I've been through because of this review -- you are very welcome, I'm genuinely glad I could help.
For anyone who disregards my advice, I wish you much better luck than I had. read more