A World-Wide Affair
The MK1 sold in many other markets across the globe, most of which there isn’t much information available. We can however give the below facts, the MK1 was manufactured in several places across the globe to keep costs low and meet demand. Around 1 million are estimated to have been built outside of Europe and North America!
Notable markets included Japan, a unique market which showcased power-folding door mirrors which were never fitted in any other market! Ford has always struggled to gain a significant market share in Japan and this was no exception as it didn’t have much sales success.
In Australia the car was only available as the European-style facelift from 2002 to 2005, with a line-up mirroring the UK with the CL, LX, Zetec, Ghia and ST170 models. There was an additional ‘Zetec R’ model from launch and a budget sports ‘SR’ model for the 2004 model year. It was never a high-selling car, the complaints from the motoring press is the 2.0-Litre models were “not powerful enough” and the engine range was “disappointing” for the market! The lowest capacity engine was a 1.8-Litre petrol and diesels were not even an option.
One of the slightly less-known success stories came from the Swedish market in which Ford had designed the Focus FFV (top image). Standing for “Flexi-Fuel Vehicle” which uses a 1.8-Litre Zetec-E engine with a tweaked ECU map to run on either 85% bio-ethanol or E85 petrol! The Swedish government wanted to reduce it’s dependence on fossil fuels during this period with tax benefits for low emission vehicles. This engine only produced 31g/km of CO2! Ford sold around 15,000 Focus FFV’s from 2001 to 2005, this represented 80% of the total of alternative fuel cars sold in Sweden during that period.
Russia was not just a market but manufactured the car using the newly-built Ford factory in Vsevolozhsk. The models and variants mirrored that of Europe and production started in August 2002 with the facelift design. The saloon was very popular. We estimate around 75,000 examples were built before production switched to the MK2 in 2005.
Another country with a manufacturing base was Taiwan, they produced examples from 2001 in their Ford Lio Ho assembly plant in Chungli and were mostly exported. The Santa Rosa assembly plant in the Philippines also manufactured them for export purposes. The Malaysia market was a beneficially, in this market there was only one-set model, 3 colours and limited to a 1.8-Litre Zetec-E drivetrain.