EcoBoost 1.6 (150 or 185?)

[Car Fan]

My dad has the 150 hp version of this engine in a C-Max and to me it pulls quite strongly (although I guess it depends what car you're coming from, as performance is relative) so I would imagine that the same engine in a Focus would be more than adequate. You're right that it is difficult to find the higher power engine - I don't know about the Focus, but when I was helping my dad find a C-Max, we couldn't find any 185 hp versions, which we would have preferred. On the C-Max the higher power version was only ever available in Titanium X trim, if this is the same case on the Focus then that could explain it.

Not driven the car myself, but my experience as a passenger is that the engine is nice and refined, and doesn't feel strained - we were put off going for the 1.0 Ecoboost as we thought it might struggle in a larger car. Apparently Mountune offer a remap that preserves the Ford warranty, so buying a 150 and remapping it could be an option - if I bought one myself, that's probably what I would do.

Only negative is that fuel economy isn't great, IMO no better than a 2.0 N/A engine would be in the same car. Admittedly my dad's car is predominantly used for short runs, and I think that having the power available lower down in the rev range suits a family car better than a naturally aspirated engine.

Hope this helps.

[SteBrown91]

The engines are the same with just a mapping difference. You can fit the mountune kit to the 150 and 182 and you get the same 200bjp result

[Car Fan]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Good to know guys, thanks.

Off to take a look at a 150 this afternoon.

How did the viewing go?

[Car Fan]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Not so great.

Dealer was a ghost town, yet would somebody come and acknowledge me, talk to me, engage with me....? nope! I was even giving them the 'I want to buy something eyes'

I did have 10 mins to poke around a car by myself, and the good news is the boot is certainly big enough for what we want. Im not put off the car, I just need to find a different dealer.

... as an aside, another car on our list of 5 or 6 potentials is a Kia Sportage. The Kia dealer happened to be opposite the Ford one, so I took a walk across and had a key to a demonstrator in <5 mins and told to take as long as I wanted.

A 20min drive sold itself very successfully to me. The engines are nowhere near as good as the Ford (I predict, having still not driven an ecoboost) but the rest of the car sold itself exceptionally well. The dealer attitude was a polar experience too.

That's a shame about the dealer experience. I think you could do a lot worse than the Sportage - they are good looking and are backed by a long warranty. I'd be interested to know how good the petrol engines are, as every Sportage I see is diesel.

I would definitely urge you to test drive a 1.6 Ecoboost at a different dealer, though, as the engine is excellent. My dad also has a leased Audi A6 for longer journeys, but most of the time the Audi just sits on the driveway as he likes the Ford so much (despite it costing half the list price of the A6).

[sato]

In the traditional way of the internet, I am going to ignore pretty much everything you have asked and tell you to look at the car I own - a Seat Leon ST which comes with 150bhp or 180bhp petrol engines.

It sounds like we have pretty similar requirements, and I was all set to buy the Focus. In the UK I completely failed to find a 1.6 Ecoboost to drive. On paper at least the more I looked into it the more the Seat was as good or better than the Focus on everything I was bothered about. It's not exactly charismatic (but then neither is the Ford), but it is definitely worth a look.