Now, those who know me know I love the Mk. 1 Focus. In fact, I own one, however this one isn’t a paperweight like mine. You’ll learn more about mine later, but for now I must leave you with this. It’s is a Mk. 1.5 Ford Focus, the facelift redo of the first generation egg of a car from the early 2000’s. Now, it does still retain the exact same egg shape with a few changes, making the face a little more serious and the interior a little less eggciting compared to the first generation. The first generation was beaten into seriousness by the Ford design team, high off their own supply, but they couldn’t fix it all. This is especially eggy because of the 3-door (yes, Ford considers the hatch a “door”) being shorter than the 5-door. Now that I think about it, how weird is it that Ford made a 2 (3) door economy hatchback? This isn’t the hot hatch version, just the plain jane Focus. The early 2000s was a wild wasteland of automotive design (I’m looking at you, Plymouth Prowler).

This particular Focus is quite a bit of a unicorn, more than the car itself already is. It’s fully loaded, except for the fact it has a stick. This focus is a genetic abnormality not seen since the Hapsburg dynasty first learn of weed. The owner thinks the dealer fucked up and checked the wrong checkbox on the manufacture sheet, and I’m inclined to believe him. It has EVERYTHING, from an audiophile package to power sunroof. However, it still had a manual transmission at a time when an automatic is “technology” and “a pricy option”. Yep, this beautiful stock ZX3 is also a stick!

A lovely 5-speed with a short shifter and BLACK BALL knob graces the banana daily driver. You shove this BLACK BALL back and forth into about where the gears and and they around about go it, it’s in no rush though.

But hey, it does drive and it does shift. How does it drive though? This thing drives exactly how it looks: like an egg. It rolls around but never tips over, fairly stiff and doesn’t go anywhere unless put into a tornado. This car is like that fat weebles wobble. You remember those? This car is the embodiment of this fucker:

Yeah, it’s slow, does the car care? No. Do you care? Not really. It just locomotes, advances forward with minor complaints. It does turn pretty well, it’s zippy and loves to just zip around. A real grandma cruiser, to go back and forth from church to the nail salon.

BEHOLD: ENGINE

And that’s about it for under the hood, what else do you want from me man. Did I mention how FUCKING YELLOW THIS THING IS WOO!! Yellow like the piss out of my dick, perhaps. It’s really yellow.

Driving this car is so easy, it’s a wonderful manual learners car. It’s just simple to drive, simple to understand, like a car for babies. No big screens, a million buttons, but just enough to make sense. Fuck, cars were so simple back then. Big button for traction control, handbrake directly in the middle, a simple wiper stalk…

THE UNFATHOMABLE FORD FOCUS WIPER STALK

1. Moving the stalk all the way up (3 notches) will make the front wipers move at the fastest constant speed.
2. Moving the stalk up 2 notches will make the front wiper move at the second fastest constant speed.
3. Moving the stalk up 1 notch will engage the intermittent wiper setting, which is controlled using label f.
4. Moving the wiper stalk down will engage the rear wiper and rear wiper washer, which will spray once.
5. Pushing the button on the end of the stalk will engage the front window washers, which will spray once.
6. This dial controls the intermittent wiper speeds, which is engaged using label c.  The numbers correspond to the speed of the intermittent wipers, ranging from 1 being the fastest to 6 being the slowest.  Note: The speed of the intermittent wiper setting isn’t faster than the constant speed engaged with label b.

Stupid wiper stalk, I want to shove it up the ass of the engineer who designed it.

There’s something special about cars that shouldn’t be clean but still are. I know you’ve all seen the million-dollar Bring-A-Trailer Geo Metros with 248 dealer miles on them. I get this isn’t THAT pristine, but for a commuter car from 2005, it only has 80k miles on it and it’s single owner. Some old, Vietnamese man was very proud of his garage queen Ford Focus for a decade, and then he died and his ungrateful kids pawned it off at a shady car dealer, or something like that. Even then, it puts you back a few years to being a teenager, bombing about the town in your first car. It’s nostalgic, even more because of the condition it’s in. I’m not saying 25 grand is a fair price to pay for a 258 mile Geo Metro, but I am starting to understand the appeal. Either way, it’s now in the hands of a new caregiver, and I’m sure it’ll continue to live a good life.