lahdelah

I'd go for a roof rack 'cos it's safer. I got my mk1 Thule'd up here: http://www.roofracks.co.uk

Don't buy a Mazda 3! The car is boring through and through and even though it supposedly shares the same chassis as the new Focus, Mazda have cut costs and don't include the independent rear suspension that makes the Focus such a joy to drive. I'd go for whatever 5 door Focus you can afford. They're all good. I have a 5 door 1.6 100PS and we ferry our kids (and junk) around in it no problem. It has everything we want in a family car. :)

To find out exactly when and where your car was built, see: http://www.ffoc.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=68861

Old Focus: Take hands off wheel at 70mph and it continues in a straight line. New Focus: Take hands off wheel at 70mph and it drifts evey so slightly to the left. Tyre pressure is spot on so could this be wheel alignment? The car has done this since day 1. :(

Even if you haven't got kids, it might be worth checking that the child locks on your rear doors are ok. You don't want to have a problem outside of the warranty... The lock keyhole's on the old Focus are metal. On the new Focus they're cheap plastic. One of mine went ping on day 1 and it took 2 visits to the dealer to get it fixed - one to tell me it was broken (they had the car all day) and another to actually fix it (it took them 3 hours, so they say, because they said they'd never replaced a latch on a new Focus before).

I can live with lifting the hatch a bit slower but I'll see if my dealer has a solution when I next take the car in. The only real concern I have is with the struts that support the hatch because the water can sometimes reach them. I'm concerned because one of the struts on my MK1 went rusty after 2 years and Ford refused to replace it because they said that struts are only covered in the 1st 12 months of the warranty(!). :|

On damp mornings or whenever it rains, just underneath the bottom lip of the rear window of my hatch, I see a tiny well of water held together by surface tension. It looks like the point in question is level and so the water has nowhere to runoff. The problem is whenever I open the hatch, the water follows the channel underneath the rear window until it gets to the edge at which point it cascades into the boot. Anybody else have this problem? Anybody had a dealer fix it? Thanks :) My car is a 1.6i 5 door Zetec, Built July 2005.