Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive update: Week two and it's ham and cheese on the menu

Two weeks into the Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive, our 12 bloggers are deep into the testing procedures and putting plenty of work into reporting the results. Honestly, some of these have left the old codgers here at the motoring.com.au team to marvel at how today’s youth walk out of high school with the ability to make a film.

There’s a fair world  of difference between the approaches to reporting and showing up the features highlighted by each test procedure, but there’s plenty of wit and wisdom on offer here, both in the video entries and the text-plus-pics ones.

Some of the video entries, from these guys and others, we’ve seen played with a pretty straight bat. We’ll investigate those in the near future. For now, we’ll take a quick look at one of the strongest trends at this point in the Ultimate Test Drive. Ham acting is showing up all over the place. And top quality thespian smallgoods we’re seeing, too, with Warren, Andrew, Blake and Janet E (aka De De) proving themselves past masters of the art.

Warren’s ‘Man vs Car’ post sees him near dying for the cause in drawing attention to how much more fuel-efficient the new Focus is than the finely tuned athlete that is... Warren.

Doctor ‘Drew deploys his Focus’s ‘incredible connectivity’ in putting a happy ending to quite possibly the lamest medical emergency he’ll encounter in the long and richly diverse career we hope stretches before him.

Janet, meanwhile, trowels on the cheese and simultaneously pushes the video technical bar up a notch or three with an impeccable film noir look and feel in an accomplished ham-mage to Hitchcock.

And Blake-finger, what was that stuff you painted yourself with in a bid to demonstrate the new Focus’s voice control? Did it rub off on the seat? (Actually your correspondent, long intimidated by auto voice control systems, found the inspiration in Blake’s video to vow to try out the system in his current road test. Thanks, Blake.)

Of course, what is good overacting without a decent soundtrack. Bloggers, you deserve the heartiest congratulations on that front – there are musical moments in there that could give a broken bootlace the feel of the siege of Troy.

It’s great, too, that the testing has been so diverse. Less than half way in, our bloggers have already given readers the chance to check out so many of the features and qualities Ford reckons will push the all-new Focus straight to the top of its class on its release in August. The park assist, the voice control, the speed limiter function that comes as part of the cruise control (great for negotiating school zones and the like), the car’s durability and build quality, the Duratorq turbodiesel’s fuel economy...

The Ultimate Test Drive was designed to put the Focus to the ultimate test – a lengthy stretch in the service of the kind of people who (Ford hopes) will end up as buyers. Which is to say, normal people with an eye for something a cut above normal.

For more check out the Ultimate Test Drive minisite here…