Ford Focus Buyer's Guide
Seven tracked Focus sales, £300 to £82,125, median £23,625, with eleven more live as we write. Be clear about what those numbers mean: the median and the ceiling are entirely the work of the RS models, with an RS500 setting the very top result. Ordinary Focuses are the other market, trading from £300 to the low thousands, and the two have almost nothing to say to each other.
What to pay
£300 to perhaps £2,000 buys the everyday car: hatchbacks and estates priced on MOT length and tyre depth rather than sentiment. From there the market jumps rather than climbs; around our £23,625 median you are buying the fast versions, honest RS cars with sensible mileage and unmodified histories. The £82,125 ceiling belongs to the RS500, the limited run-out car, and it prices as a collectable rather than a hatchback. Eleven live lots suggest supply across both ends.
What goes wrong
On ordinary cars the list is short and cheap: rear arch and sill corrosion on early examples, worn suspension bushes, and the usual consumables; parts supply is as good as it gets for anything British-market. The RS cars shift the risk from mechanical to historical: theft, crash repairs and heavy modification are common in the breed, so the file, the panel gaps and the originality of the engine bay matter far more than the odometer. A standard, documented RS is the rare thing; the market prices accordingly.
Our view
As transport, a £1,000 Focus with history remains one of the great rational purchases. As a classic, only the RS line matters, and the unmodified cars will keep pulling away from the tampered ones. Buy standard, buy documented, and let the £82,125 result tell you where the ceiling already is.
