Focus ST Claims 23MPG City, 32MPG Highway

by Jack Baruth

Published: July 12th, 2012

focus st claims 23mpg city 32mpg highway

Sometimes, the Ford Facebook pages bring you horrifying news like “We commissioned Tanner Foust, Vaughn Gittin Jr., Brian Deegan, Ken Block, and other amazing drivers to take the Focus ST through its paces against competitors for our upcoming video series dubbed, ‘ST Sessions.'”

If the thought of indirectly paying those four, ah, individuals to “hoon” by purchasing a new Focus ST hasn’t completely made you lose your appetite, there’s now some actual news regarding the car to share:

The ST’s 23/32 rating puts it slightly ahead of the VW GTI, which doesn’t have nearly the power, and well ahead of the Mazdaspeed3. While Ford’s Facebook fans often possess all the intellect of the aforementioned baseball-cap-directionally-challenged Brian Deegan and therefore somehow expected the car to match the “Omni Miser’s” 50MPG highway rating despite recent EPA adjustments, most people are pretty satisfied with 26mpg combined.

Want more power with better real-world mileage? You might have to buy an Impala.

Jack Baruth

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14 of 76 comments

SV on Jul 12, 2012

For a 250hp car, that's quite good. I'm more surprised by how terrible the Speed3's mileage is: about the same as a typical large V6 crossover. Yikes.

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Jetcal1 on Jul 12, 2012

I barely make 30 MPG with my castrated Fit (auto) on my daily commute of 80 miles with about 60 miles of it 70-74 MPH burning E10. I would be happy with 25 and thrilled with 28 real world.

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- Mnm4ever on Jul 12, 2012
  
  That really makes me feel better actually, nice to know I can get the same mileage as a Fit, but with like double the HP! But doesn't E10 get worse mileage?
  
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- Jetcal1 on Jul 12, 2012
  
  @mnm4ever E10 does kill mileage. But keeping up with tollway traffic in the Dallas area requires a heavy foot and the Fit is quite incapable of accelerating without dropping into 3rd gear. (Even in 3rd gear it is quite incapable of accelerating.) I have seen good cruising mileage on highway trips of around 34 MPG on flat roads with steady state cruise control and no need to pass on the left. (and no E10)
  
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- 30-mile fetch on Jul 13, 2012
  
  And I'll bet your Fit is spinning at 4000 rpm in top gear, working hard to shove that high profile little box through the air. I like a lot about the Fit, but man, it is not a good highway car.
  
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- Burgersandbeer on Jul 13, 2012
  
  This is a great illustration of why B-segment and sometimes even C-segment cars are not great tools for highway commutes. The gearing is too aggressive to get decent economy while keeping up with traffic. When the gearing isn't aggressive, they are frustratingly slow.
  
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NormSV650 on Jul 12, 2012

So nice to have a discussion about fuel economy and performance cars with no one mentions America's most efficient full line manufacturer. :)

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Ciddyguy on Jul 12, 2012

It's been just over 6 months since I bought the '03 Mazda Protege5 I own now and in that time, I've come to realize that this class of car (C class) with a 2.0L motor never really got much beyond low thirties AT BEST since, well, old buck was a pup - until more recently and even then, some cars do it better than others. That said, I once had a 1988 Honda Accord (mine was the FI LX-I with a power moonroof and factory alloys), a sporty looking though not so sporty driving 4 door sedan with a 2.0L, 120hp naturally aspirated 4 with a 5spd and I bet I never got more than 32mpg on the highway as that was what I expected out of that car at the time. The same went for the Mazda (with the same sized, but with 130hp 4) though in reality, according to the newer number figures, both cars (the Mazda and the Honda) get closer to 28mpg Hwy, 22 city with 24 average, according to the fuel mileage website from the US Gov. Not that I'm complaining now as on my road trip in early June, I managed around 25mpg all told since almost all of that tank was highway mileage, which included rush hour on my way to Tacoma from Sedro-Woolley, which sits about 60 miles north of Seattle. All told with a trip to Olympia (and a fill up before getting on the freeway) to my youngest sister, I put about 330 miles on the Mazda that weekend and loved every minute of it. I had to do roughly 220 miles on the 4th of July as I missed being able to take the ferry over to Bainbridge Island from Seattle (as a walk on) to be at the parade they do every year and had to drive around to meet family, taking the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and driving up the peninsula to get to the island. I've done that drive many times in other cars and love doing that drive too (and it's a pretty drive once on the peninsula). The point is, the car is rated at 22-28 with 24 being the combined average and with a lighter foot, I can achieve close to that but doubt I get over 25-26mpg though at 65-70 with a 4spd autobox (sport stick) as anything faster than that in 4th, mean creaping past 3000rpm. And the main reason I am not complaining is that I can actually afford to fill the tank since it has 14.5Gallon in it, that's why. but still, I do wish it did a bit better than it does, but sadly, it's sensitive to the rpms it has to run at so that does not help the mileage any at all, plus we run E10 gas here, so it's no more than 10% ethanol and that'll drop the mileage down by what, 2mpg or so by itself. That being said, I've long felt that C segment cars, 32 for highway, low to mid 20's city, B segment cars a bit more, mid to upper 20's city, mid thirties or so highway being the norm and that goes back some 20 years or perhaps more.

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- 30-mile fetch on Jul 13, 2012
  
  Dunno, I think you are selling most C class cars short with those expectations. I think its a Mazda thing; they have never been known for class leading fuel economy, and 25 mpg is pretty low for a 2.0L compact. Civics and Corollas with 130-140hp 1.8L engines easily pull upper 30s to 40 mpg on the highway, even ones from over a decade ago. My old 96 Camry 4-pot would get 30-34 if you kept it under 75. My 5 cylinder Jetta wagon weighs a lardassed 3300lbs and easily gets 30mpg highway, 25 combined. And that powerplant is definitely not known for efficiency. That said, a fun car like your Mazda is worth putting up with a fuel economy hit. If I can afford to drive somewhere at 30mpg, I can afford to do it at 25mpg too.
  
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- Ciddyguy on Jul 13, 2012
  
  @30-mile fetch I may be, but I also know that in the past, mileage was often oversold for the small econoboxes such as the FE Civics with 40 (or more) mpg highway and even that may have been stretching things at normal driving techniques. Now, if you hypermile any of the B/C segment cars, then yeah, you may WELL get what the EPA and the manufacturers have been claiming for such cars, but likely at the cost of safety etc. I'm not saying small cars like the '83 Civic I once had could not do more than 35 highway, but more or less, that was the average it obtained while on the highway (assuming a 5spd manual). But based on what the real world averages as well as the EPA, that's been my feeling for a long time and that's largely based on our system of measurement, which yields less mpg than those cars with imperial gallons or liters.
  
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- Sastexan on Jul 13, 2012
  
  "And the main reason I am not complaining is that I can actually afford to fill the tank since it has 14.5Gallon in it, that’s why." Pet peeve of mine - gas tank size is irrelevant to gas usage / gas mileage. Only relevance is to range.
  
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- Ciddyguy on Jul 13, 2012
  
  Sastexan, True, but cruising range will do you NO good if you can't even afford to fill up your tank even half the time. A case in point, the old Ranger truck I had, it was a 92 Ford Ranger with the 4.0L V6, which automatically, as far as I can discern gets the 18-20G tank and it cost MUCH more to fill it up to shut off than it does to fill my little Mazda. Thing was, gas mileage on that thing was not fantastic. According to the current system in use by the EPA, that truck is expected to do 16 city, 22 Hwy, 18 average - at best. I thought I heard my best friend say the hwy mileage to be 24-27MPG. Dunno but I was too poor to keep it full as it cost so much to fill it up. As it is, I almost always fill my little Mazda's tank at each fill up and when I took the truck to the beach, a 2 hour drive by freeway/highway, I think I got no more than 350 miles out of a tank of gas, which was enough to get me to the cabin from I think Tacoma (where I topped off the tank) and to refill in Tacoma (was getting mighty low at that point IIRC) before continuing on into Seattle, another hour north. As it is now, at 14.5gallons, at 25mpg, I *should*, theoretically get 360 or so miles out of a full tank of gas. The point is, I'm going places when I can afford to do so. I've done 3 day trips so far with the car in the 6 months I've owned it so far, the truck, 2 in the 6 years I owned it, mostly commuting to and from work and seeing mom every so often in Tacoma (again, it's about an hour to an hour and a half depending on whether I'm doing it from home in Seattle or work in Bellevue as Bellevue adds about another half hour to the trip). I will admit, it helps that I have working AC in my Mazda, the truck had it, but it didn't work.
  
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- Burgersandbeer on Jul 14, 2012
  
  @sastexan ciddyguy - The size of the gas tank has zero impact on how much you spend on gas, only how often you have to stop. You spend less on gas in the Mazda because it uses less fuel, not because the gas tank is smaller. If the Protege used gas at the same rate as the Ranger, you would spend less at each stop, but stop more often. I don't understand how you think having a smaller gas tank is somehow helping you afford to put gas in it. People get way too hung up on the numbers on the pump.
  
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- Ciddyguy on Jul 14, 2012
  
  @sastexan Burgersandbear, I'd say, it's both the size of the tank AND the mileage, which is partly why we have smaller cars. they typically get better mileage than a larger car, and for roughly the same cruising range can do it on a smaller sized tank. If you have to fill your tank up at roughly the same intervals, I'd rather pay less per fill up than not if I had a choice, especially if my budget is of limited means. This allows me to do the occasional road trip whereas I may not in a car that cost considerably more to fill up.
  
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