Ford Focus Towing Capacity: What To Know
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Ford is known for producing hard-working vehicles. Their trucks, F150, 250, 350, and so on, are some of the highest-rated and most respected work trucks currently on the market, especially for farmers and business owners who need to haul stock long distances.
But when it comes to the Ford Focus, there was just a different focus in the design room. Instead of looking for a high-capacity high-performance working vehicle, the Focus is designed to be more of an efficient commuter vehicle.
That makes a lot of sense when you consider the range of audience that Ford has for their vehicles, and for the changing needs of different kinds of drivers in the United States.
However, more and more people are looking for vehicles that are designed to do more than one thing and do it well. People are looking for a commuter that can still haul a trailer or camper when you want it to or a work vehicle that’s got the fuel efficiency to be a reasonable commuter.
So, what about the Ford Focus? What kind of towing capacity does the Focus offer, and can you expect it to pull double-duty as a commuter and also a hauling vehicle?
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Ford Focus Towing Capacity: The Basics
The first thing you need to know is that towing with your Focus can cause some problems. Most importantly, the Ford Focus isn’t rated to tow in the United States.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t tow with your Focus, or that your Focus doesn’t have any towing capacity, simply that it’s not really designed for towing.
Why does design intent matter more than capacity? Warranties.
If you tow with a Ford Focus in the United States you’re pretty much guaranteed to void the manufacturer warranty on that Focus. In practical terms, that means that attaching a towing hitch to your Focus will make it more difficult to get any kind of warranty work on your Focus, and any damage that looks towing related will almost certainly be considered non-warrantied damage.
That’s not a huge deal if you don’t mind waiting for the warranty to end before you start towing. But if you’re buying a Focus to haul a small trailer to your campsite next week, you need to know that you’re not going to have warranty protection from then on.
How Much Can A Ford Focus Haul?
The next thing you need to know is the towing capacity for a Ford Focus.
There is a good bit of variation between model years when it comes to towing capacity. For instance, the 2017 and 2018 4-door hatchback versions of the Focus both have a maximum towing capacity of 2425 lbs., according to TowingCap.com%20above%20sea%20level.>).
However, also from TowingCap.com, the 2015 4-door hatchback model only has a maximum capacity of 1750 lbs.
In general, newer Focuses have a higher towing capacity than the older models. The 4-door versions also tend to have a higher towing capacity, and in some cases, the hatchback model will have a higher towing capacity than the 4-door sedan or the 2-door coupe.
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Difference Between Total Capacity And Payload Capacity
One of the most important things to understand when you’re looking up the hauling capacity of any vehicle is that different notations mean different things.
For instance, the 2425 lbs. capacity of the 2018 Ford Focus is its total capacity, which doesn’t figure in the weight of the vehicle vs. the weight of the payload.
Payload capacity, on the other hand, is how you can tell how much you can load onto a Focus, either inside the vehicle or on a trailer on the back, or, in some cases, loaded on the top of the Focus.
When it comes to actually loading your vehicle or figuring out how to best distribute the weight of what you’re hauling, that’s a whole other thing and can be both complicated and require some finesse to get right.
If you want to know how much you can haul with your Focus you need to look at the Payload capacity, which is only 1042 lbs. for the 2018 4-door hatchback.
Now, it’s also important to remember that the payload capacity total weight includes the weight of the trailer as well as its contents, the contents of the Focus (including passengers), and any other additional weight you’re loading into the vehicle.
When you take all of those things into account, 1042 lbs. aren’t actually all that much to work with. It’s respectable for a vehicle as small and efficiency-focused as the Ford Focus, but it’s not a huge hauling capacity compared with vehicles that are more designed to haul.
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Why Doesn’t The Ford Focus Have Better Hauling Capacity?
Well, there are a few reasons when you look at the design of the Ford Focus that it makes sense for the hauling capacity to be a good bit lower than other Ford vehicles.
For one thing, the Focus is designed to be a small, efficient, mostly urban vehicle. They trade engine power for fuel efficiency, have a smaller and more aerodynamic frame for the same reason, and don’t have the higher clearance of a lot of Ford vehicles because they aren’t designed for rugged terrain.
That’s not to say that a Focus won’t occasionally outperform its intended purpose, they are Ford vehicles after all, but rather to say that Ford really was looking at drastically different things when they designed this vehicle.
If you’re looking for something that can haul a higher weight capacity, consider some of Ford’s larger vehicles. Or look at Honda or Toyota models if you want something a little more powerful but more affordable than some of Ford’s higher-capacity models.
Why Isn’t The Ford Focus Towing Rated In The United States?
Well, there are a few reasons that the Focus isn’t rated for towing in the United States.
For instance, there just isn’t a lot you can safely tow with a Focus. Especially if you have more than one passenger in the car itself, there’s not a lot of weight capacity left over before you start hitting the weight limit on the suspension and stress the engine. Neither of those problems is an end of the world crisis, but both mean more wear and tear than the vehicle was designed to handle long term.
By not certifying the Focus as a towing vehicle, Ford can emphasize that occasionally going a little over the weight limit isn’t a big problem, but that doing so consistently will cause significant problems.
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