Quote Originally Posted by ViVi View Post
You have to ask few questions to yourself to decide whether Ford Focus or Fn2.

1. Performance
2. Spacious
3. Interior
4. Maintenance (Most important, you wouldn't buy a car but you can't maintain it)


From the way your replied, it sound you already decided to get ford xr5 but need further comments.
See thats my problem, I WAS sure on the XR5. But with some of the comments here that do make sense, Im leaning toward the Honda now.

1) Performance - this is probably not the most important. The Honda is slower in a straight line, but its a very nice handeling car. Unfortunately I can buy a low kilometre 2007 type r for half the price for speed. So which ever goes faster is not important. BUT, perception of speed is important to me. The Type R has street cred, thats what I know Im buying into. Its a Honda, but its a honda thats not living up to the heritage of the R badge. So with the Focus, with the BIG turbo dial on top of the dash, the TURBO in the badge, it says its got lots of omph. so if its performance, then the 5 is my choice.

2) Spacious - The R has more space in the front, but at the sacrifice of the rear seats. so essentially its just a 2+2 set up. The ford loses a bit of foot space for rear seat space. The ford is also longer, so everyone is comfortable. Im 25 so a family is not on the list for me atm, but I do have mates and I also DO want a family someday, so as a lonjevity, the XR5 is the choice. For boot space, they both fold down. The 5 has more space but once you fold the seats down, the R can fold flat, the 5 doesnt, so the R tends to be a bit better in space.

3) Interior - Ok, this is a tricky one that is hard for me to figure out. The R looks Sexy, the ford has more toys. The ford has cloth or optional leather recaro seats, the R doesnt. Everytime I fold the chair on the R, it never goes back to where it was before and ALWAYS slides on its rails... WHY? Modern cars today dont do that anymore. The options to make the R look better are jsut too damn expensive. I wish I could get a carbon fibre look on the dash and Illuminated skuff plates just to add to that sense of rice, but the ford lets me buy coloured LED lights to attach to the floor wells so alraedy the ford is miles ahead.

4) Maintainence - well, Ive never heard maintainence issues with the XR5 nor the Type R. so Im quite sure they are quite reliable. There are a lot of XR5's in the ACT area and I've spoken to a few there and they work like normally aspirated cars. As for the Turbo, I've never owned one so Im not 100% on the maintainence on that. As for fuel, the one I drove was averaging at 7-8l/100kms on a normal drive. When I thrashed it, it was doing 10-12l/100kms. So Im pretty impressed.

So like you said Im pretty sure on the XR5 but Its jsut really hard to ignore the R. In fact, I just spoke to a Subaru dealer and a demo model hits my budget perfectly, its got more power, more torque and better cred than both cars. What I do know is that the WRX is sexier and what I love about it is that they are reliable as anything.

So when I see the subaru dealer, I might have to worry about a 3rd car. Damn