Focus is the world’s best selling car
The Ford that’s taking down the Toyota Corolla
By Shahzad Sheikh
You’re not going to believe this, in fact I can hardly believe it myself, but it appears that in the first half of 2012, the world’s, yes, the whole wide world’s best selling car is the Ford Focus! Read our review of it here.
And it’s not just Ford claiming this either. It’s based on global data from HIS Automotive which says that Ford sold 489,616 models of Focus in the first six months of the year with the Toyota Corolla – traditionally the world’s best-selling car, selling 462,187 units.
A Focus built at Ford’s Rayong plant in Thailand has also become the company’s 350 millionth vehicle produced. As a Ford top-exec, John Fleming, pointed out, that’s like producing one vehicle every 10 seconds for 109 years, and if placed end-to-end the Fords would stretch to the moon and back – twice!
Focus was launched in 1998 – I actually remember attending the European launch and being completely blown away by the dynamic ability of the humble ‘family hatchback’.
The hot ST version is the star of a new British movie, The Sweeney (click here for more), and the good news is that it will officially go on sale in the Middle East. Standby for more on that soon!
