S40 Focus

[m3rlin]

Is my s40 (05) a rebaged focus?

[billofdurham]

When the same parent company owns two or more marques there always tends to be some styling carried over from one to the other. Ford bought out Volvo and Jaguar and some Ford cars resembled Volvo cars , or vice versa, not too long after the take over. The rear lights of the S60 and the S80 resemble the rear lights of the Jaguars then in production.

I don't know if you can remember the British Motor Corporation but it took over smaller companies such as Riley, Wolseley, Austin, Morris and MG, among others.

In the 1950s and 1960s we had a choice of cars such as the Austin Cambridge, Wolseley 15/60, Morris Oxford, MG Magnette and the Riley 4/68. The styling was done by Pininfarina and the only noticeable differences were the radiator grilles and rear lights. The Cambridge and Oxford were the cheaper options with a more austere interior.

Moving on to the smaller cars we had the BMC Mini, which took the market by storm. This was quickly followed by the Riley Elf and the Wolseley Hornet which were slightly longer than the Mini, by adding a boot, but the obvious differences, again, were the radiator grille and the rear lights.

Your S40 and the Ford Focus do share some styling but I think the S40 will prove to be a far superior car.

Bill.

[jblackburn]

It is actually one of THE BEST small-car platforms - the Mazda 3, Focus, S40, and something else I can't remember share the platform as well. They all share fantastic handling characteristics.

Now, if only Ford's European division would bring the Focus ST with the Volvo T5 engine state-side, there's a great little hatchback people would love. That configuration is due to be replaced soon with Ford's Ecoboost 2.0 4-cylinder, though.

[m3rlin]

So basically from what ive found out is ford used the engine from the volvo, and ford used parts of the volvo chassis in the focus. Dam theives lol.

[MadeInJapan]

Now, answering this thread 6 years later, I can tell you that many of the parts are interchangeable. In fact, my fuse panel has FoMoCo stamped on it- this is in an '07 S40... Also, when I bought the car and changed my spark plugs, although the plugs were identical to the Volvo turbo plugs they had FoMoCo stamped on them- my car was originally purchased in Germany. Rear end links and sway bars are interchangeable as well as the lower torque engine to transmission mount. I'm sure there are other parts as well....Mazda 3, and Ford Focus, especially the European version (E-Focus) shared many many parts...these all changed shape again around 2008 with the different companies going their different ways and Volvo being sold to a Chinese company.