Head to head: Mercedes-AMG GT 63S 4-Door Coupe v Ford Focus Active
Both cars have been awarded four stars ... and while one carries a price tag of $351,640, and the other is just $29,990.
Today, The Weekend Australian’s motoring writers Philip King and Jeremy Clarkson turn their attention to two very different vehicles. And while there may be a $320,000 price difference between the Mercedes-AMG GT 63S 4-Door Coupe and the Ford Focus Active, there is plenty to like about both.
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Mercedes-AMG GT 63S 4-Door Coupe
Engine: 4.0-litre turbo-petrol V8 (470kW/900Nm)
Average fuel: 11.3 litres per 100km
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Price: $351,640
Rating: ★★★★
REVIEW: Philip King
Apparently 21 per cent of drivers admit to having texted or browsed on their phone when behind the wheel, which means 79 per cent lied. You see it everywhere, every day. We’re so addicted to the little devices, even the threat of points on our licence fails to deter us.
Phones are not the only distraction. We do a non-motoring task every 96 seconds while driving, according to the National Transport Commission. It says our regulations are out of date and will advise transport ministers next May on possible changes.
Car-makers are caught between a rock and a hard shoulder on this. Seamless integration between phone and car was meant to be part of the solution but as anyone who has been tormented by voice recognition or touchscreens will know, it often involves frustration. Glance away from the road for more than two seconds and your crash risk doubles.
Car-makers are adding features that aggravate the problem and some are surprising. When Mercedes began installing Energising Comfort Control two years ago, it seemed like a fancy way to turn up the aircon and ambient lights. Indeed, that’s most of what it does. But in the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door driven here, I delved further. Under the Training sub-menu, it takes the driver through 10-minute muscle relaxation or stimulation exercises – shoulder rotations, abdominal tensing, that sort of thing. “Interrupt the exercise as soon as the traffic situation requires,” cautions the robotic voice. Uh-huh...
The Balance program goes further: “What are your thoughts right now? Follow the natural rhythms of inhaling [and] exhaling...” These are effectively guided meditation drills, which are said to increase clarity and alertness. But isn’t the point of meditation to remove yourself from the situation? Is that a good idea?
Perhaps so. Some ability to shut out one’s surroundings might be welcomed by occupants of the GT 4-Door. Tagged a Coupe, it’s actually a sedan based on the GT sportscar developed by Mercedes’ performance sub-brand AMG. Conceptually, it’s identical to Porsche’s Panamera, which attempts to scale up the design and driving appeal of its 911 sportscar into something more practical. So the 4-Door has a similar face to the two-door GTs and, like the Panamera, a low, stretched cabin culminating in a fast liftback tail. It’s better looking than its Porsche rival and has a more balanced profile than the long-bonneted two-door. But it’s disappointing to find that the strakes behind the front wheel arches are fake.
The cabin is defined by shapely sports seats and lots of the performance trim defaults of carbon fibre and high-tech faux suede – Dinamica in this case. It’s impressively finished and tightly put together, with the widescreen dashboard now commonplace in Mercedes at every level. It has made one backward step, though, in doing away with a rotary controller in favour of a touchpad.
Now there’s plenty of feelgood here, but occupants might inhale deeply when it comes to ride comfort and refinement. Fitted with extra-low profile Michelins on huge 21-inch alloys, the 4-Door treads heavily into the smallest road indent, and rumbles and thumps over all but the smoothest roads. And that is in comfort setting. On my regular test route, there are enough patchy surfaces to make it thunderously brutal most of the time. Sport or Sport+ were sampled only for the sake of completeness.
If you can live with this — and that’s a big “if” — then the 4-Door is about as close to a sportscar as something 5.1m long and weighing 2.1 tonnes can be. Despite its two-box shape, it feels tight and stiff with predictably well-disciplined handling. Of course it’s fitted with every dynamic trick in the AMG playbook, from adaptive dampers to active engine mounts and rear-axle steering. It steers at speed with the relaxed manner of a car that doesn’t have to try too hard.
Acceleration also comes easily. The 4-Door fits the most powerful version of AMG’s 4.0-litre turbo V8 to date. With 470kW and 900Nm, it has 40kW more power and 200Nm more torque than the most extreme version of the Coupe, the GT R. Remarkably, despite its substantial dimensions, it’s quicker by 0.4s to 100km/h at just 3.2s. Its top speed is virtually a match at 315km/h instead of 318km/h.
AMG has largely programmed out the downsides of turbochargers. There’s little lag and – by turbo standards – an intriguing soundtrack. It gets unfussed traction through all four wheels although if you do get on the throttle a little early exiting a corner, the huge twisting forces at work can be felt in the car.
By its very nature, the 4-Door has more of everything else as well. There’s snug but comfortable rear seating, with a forward view limited by the front headrests but lots of knee-room. There’s about a quarter more cargo capacity, at 461 litres, expanded by folding the seats to create an almost flat load area. There’s no external latch on the tailgate, though, and the acutely angled rear glass has no wiper.
The GT 63S 4-Door is line-ball on price with the top-spec two-door hard-tops (and there’s a Roadster) but the GT 53 4-Door, at $251,140, lowers the price of entry to the range; powered by a six-cylinder turbo 3.0-litre engine, it’s the only variant without a V8 and is relatively slow off the mark at 4.5s to 100km/h. It misses out on some of the cabin feelgood trim but does get the Energising Comfort Control.
Now, there’s nothing to stop the pursuit of mindfulness by playing a meditation app while driving, but when it comes to distraction perhaps even smartphones are not the real culprit. If urban wisdom is reliable and men really do think about sex every seven seconds, that alone could be the cause of all traffic accidents on the planet.
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Ford Focus Active
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo-petrol three-cylinder (134kW/240Nm)
Average fuel: 6.4 litres per 100km
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, front-wheel drive
Price: From $29,990
Rating: ★★★★
REVIEW: Jeremy Clarkson
My son was taught many things at school, absolutely none of which are of any use. And that’s why recently, when the keys to his first flat were handed over, he thought he could simply move in, open a beer and sit down on the sofa to watch a bit of football. Council tax? Residents’ parking permit? Wi-fi? None of this had occurred to him. He had, however, bought a flat-pack sofa and some other stuff from Ikea, mainly because his mother had said to him: “You’re going to need to think about furniture.”
I offered to help him assemble it. But with all the bits and pieces spread out like a wave across the floor, I began to feel overwhelmed. So I had to become unmanly and break out the instruction manual, which was a series of simple diagrams. Well, they might be simple to you, but to me they looked like the architectural drawings for a submarine base.
Nonetheless, with my special tongue-out concentrating face on, it all started to come together. To get some parts attached to other parts I had to adopt a few cruel and unusual yoga positions, and that made me out of breath, but after just three hours the sofa was built, and when I put it the right way up it didn’t wobble or fall to pieces.
I’d never bought anything from Ikea before. But having built that sofa, and seen how strong and robust the finished product was, I’m wondering why anyone would buy anything from anywhere else.
All of which brings me to the Ford Focus Active. Now, you don’t want one, because you want an SUV or a sports car or something with a BMW badge. A Ford Focus? That’s flat-pack furniture with windscreen wipers. It’s ordinary. It’s dull. And even if you do have a beige-slacks moment and fire up Ford’s configurator, you’ll learn it has a 1.5-litre three-cylinder engine. And you’ll think: “Oh, for crying out loud. A three-cylinder engine? It won’t move.”
But here’s the thing. It does move. Really move. Because, while the engine might be small, it somehow conjures up 134kW. And what’s even better is that it will shut down one cylinder when you aren’t in a hell-for-leather frame of mind and run around happily on two. Which means you’ll save money on fuel and be right-swiped by Greta Thunberg next time she’s in town.
It’s a lovely engine, too, full of vim and vigour, and if you ask it to stretch its legs, it makes a sort of eager gravelly noise. I really, really liked it. I liked the overall feel of the car, in fact. The original Ford Focus, thanks to its well-engineered independent rear suspension, was in a class of its own for good manners, but in recent years some of that quality has been missing. It’s back now, however. Even though this model has a raised suspension, you can whiz along in it and things never get hectic or unruly. It’s as composed as a ballet dancer.
And here comes the best bit. You get, as standard in the Active X trim, a full-length glass roof, keyless entry, mercifully unpanicky parking sensors, two-zone airconditioning, Apple CarPlay, a lane-departure warning system and something called post-collision braking. Personally, I’d prefer pre-collision braking, but there you are. Now, sure, you get that sort of stuff with a BMW or a Mercedes as well, but they don’t cost $29,990 and the Ford does. Because it’s a Ford.
It won’t turn many heads. But if you want a spacious car that does what you want, cheaply and efficiently, you’ll struggle to find anything better. Certainly, it swallowed up all the empty Ikea boxes left in my son’s flat. Which gives me an idea. Why doesn’t Ford sell the Focus in kit form? It would be cheaper still – and clever people like me who are good with their hands could put it together in a weekend. It might even be fun.