4 cam tbird
Club Member
My girlfriend and I took a road trip through South Dakota to the corn palace, Badlands, Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy horse monument, down through Nebraska to see Car Henge and Chimney Rock, up Pikes Peak and through Colorado, down to New Mexico and back following a lot of old Route 66 after Scooter suggested doing so.
I was pretty impressed with the Focus, I think fueleconomy.gov rates the 2009 at 33 highway. We got nearly 34 both on the car's computer and by my calculation, which were both within 1% of each other. I drove 85 through all of South Dakota which is a substantial elevation change from East to West. It maintained speed up some long steep hills with a downshift out of OD. I hammered the poor car up Pikes Peak for all it was worth coming out of the tight hair pins. Then Route 66 is a lot of slowing for small towns, speeding up, in town driving in bigger towns. In places where the old highway runs parallel to the interstate you have to stop everywhere the interstate has an exit.
Given all that, I was very impressed with the car. Up through some mountainous areas of New Mexico it was able to maintain 80 up some hills and I was passing a new Spectra and a new Corrolla that had been running faster than me before we got to the hill (Focus does have more power at a lower RPM than both of those).
The only times I really missed the Lightning and wished we had taken that were when we were trying to pass cars on Highway 50 heading West from Royal Gorge. The Focus isn't real good for passing on two lane roads. When going up Pikes Peak, 140 HP at 14k feet elevation gets pretty anemic. And lastly when accelerating, the thing drops too far out of the power band shifting from 1 to 2, falls flat on it's face. Seemed to need a lower (higher numerical) 2nd gear. Overall I really thought it would suck a lot worse to drive. The sync was sweet for the long trip too. Had my girlfriend's ipod and a bunch of my music on a USB drive.
I definitely didn't miss the Lightning in the total gas bill though, saved at least $150 by renting the car and paying for it's gas compared to buying gas for the Lightning, not to mention all the other associated maintenance costs with driving the Lightning 4200 miles.
I'll post some pics from the trip in the pics section later, have some panoramics that I need to put together first. Lots of cool stuff along old Route 66. They are on facebook if you're friends with me on there though.
I was pretty impressed with the Focus, I think fueleconomy.gov rates the 2009 at 33 highway. We got nearly 34 both on the car's computer and by my calculation, which were both within 1% of each other. I drove 85 through all of South Dakota which is a substantial elevation change from East to West. It maintained speed up some long steep hills with a downshift out of OD. I hammered the poor car up Pikes Peak for all it was worth coming out of the tight hair pins. Then Route 66 is a lot of slowing for small towns, speeding up, in town driving in bigger towns. In places where the old highway runs parallel to the interstate you have to stop everywhere the interstate has an exit.
Given all that, I was very impressed with the car. Up through some mountainous areas of New Mexico it was able to maintain 80 up some hills and I was passing a new Spectra and a new Corrolla that had been running faster than me before we got to the hill (Focus does have more power at a lower RPM than both of those).
The only times I really missed the Lightning and wished we had taken that were when we were trying to pass cars on Highway 50 heading West from Royal Gorge. The Focus isn't real good for passing on two lane roads. When going up Pikes Peak, 140 HP at 14k feet elevation gets pretty anemic. And lastly when accelerating, the thing drops too far out of the power band shifting from 1 to 2, falls flat on it's face. Seemed to need a lower (higher numerical) 2nd gear. Overall I really thought it would suck a lot worse to drive. The sync was sweet for the long trip too. Had my girlfriend's ipod and a bunch of my music on a USB drive.
I definitely didn't miss the Lightning in the total gas bill though, saved at least $150 by renting the car and paying for it's gas compared to buying gas for the Lightning, not to mention all the other associated maintenance costs with driving the Lightning 4200 miles.
I'll post some pics from the trip in the pics section later, have some panoramics that I need to put together first. Lots of cool stuff along old Route 66. They are on facebook if you're friends with me on there though.
