To be completely frank with you, when the opportunity arose of testing a Focus with automatic transmission came up, I did not think it a cause for celebration. It would be a worthy car, I was quite sure, but not one that I would spend more than five minutes thinking about after it had gone. You can imagine my astonishment, then, when I realised, within the first few miles, that this is actually a very appealing vehicle.But then, this is no ordinary automatic. The "Powershift" in the car's title refers to the recently-introduced gearbox which, though the creation of Ford and transmission specialist Getrag (and shared with Volvo), is very similar in concept to the Volkswagen Group's DSG unit which is used in VWs and SEATs, and - renamed S tronic - in Audis.If you'll excuse a brief digression into technical matters, this means that it is not an automatic in the conventional sense at all. It's a manual, split into two halves, each with its own clutch, which means that it selects the next gear before you actually need it, with a brief and silent reshuffle if the requirement is for a gear other than the one it thought of itself.Although there are penalties if you choose Powershift over a standard manual, they're nothing like as severe as they would be in a true automatic. Performance, fuel economy and CO2 emissions all suffer, but only by a small margin. You would be a very severe fellow if you thought the 2mph reduction in maximum speed and the extra 0.2 seconds for the 0-62mph drag were cause for complaint, while combined economy is down just 2.7mpg and the 10g/km of additional CO2 has very little bearing on how much road tax you'll have to pay.You do have to pay more right at the start of the ownership process, though. Powershift adds £1200 to the cost of an equivalent manual Focus 2.0 TDCi (the two-litre diesel being the only engine used in conjunction with this gearbox), though if a diesel automatic is what you want you're probably not going to be turned against the car for that reason alone.The test car cost £20,645, which makes it the most expensive Powershift Focus of all, but that's because it had five doors and the 133bhp version of the diesel engine, and came in the range-topping Titanium trim level. If the price seems steep, you can save money by having three doors, a 109bhp maximum power output and less equipment.Right from when the Powershift transmission was announced, Ford made it clear that its intention was to offer the ease of driving of an automatic with the relatively small fuel and CO2 costs mentioned previously. Where Ford has gone its own way is in avoiding any suggestion of extra sportiness, particularly the lightning-fast gearchanges of the VW Group cars and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, which uses a similar system.The quick reactions of those cars are not matched by the Focus. If you switch to manual mode (which involves pulling the gear selector to the right and then pushing it forwards and backwards to select gears - Ford does not offer extra paddles behind the steering wheel as the other manufacturers do), you immediately notice that the shifts are quite slow. I didn't go to the extent of measuring this with a stopwatch, but I'd say that the gap between selecting a gear manually and the change actually taking place is not less than one second.Directing the changes of gear yourself is not a bad idea if you're trying to get over complicated terrain in a hurry, and I found it was a bonus over a particularly twisty and hilly road near where I live. But for most situations you'd be as well letting Powershift make the decisions for you. I never found that it chose badly during normal driving, and the way it hangs on to a low gear when you're trying to maintain a constant speed down a steep hill is particularly useful.The lack of power loss compared with an automatic is impressive, too. Yes, you do lose that last scrap of acceleration that a hard-driven manual can provide, but I didn't once feel that the car was struggling. Quite the contrary - I thought that the 133bhp diesel made the Focus feel pretty perky.Any complaints? Only one: I do wish Ford would supply a proper footrest. That applies to the Focus range in general, but particularly to this model, since your left foot has nothing to do. On a long trip the car would be more relaxing if that foot had something to rest on, though if you normally keep it on the floor you're not going to share this particular niggle with me.Apart from that, I can't see that there's anything to complain about with Powershift, which strikes me as having all the advantages of a regular automatic with almost none of the disadvantages. Engine 1997 cc, 4 cylinders Power 136 bhp @4000 rpm Torque 236 ib/ft @2000 rpm Transmission 6 speed semi-auto Fuel/CO2 48.6 mpg / 154 g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 9.6sec Top speed 124 mph Price From £20161.00 approx Release date 01/02/2008
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