[MOC] Ford Focus ST

[Jeroen Ottens]

Hi,

I'd like to present my latest model:

It is a Ford Focus ST that I built in commission for a customer. Despite its scale it does have the following features:

- Steering (with a virtual pivot point, Ackermann geometry and a working steeringwheel)
- A 3 cylinder fake engine
- Opening doors, bonnet and trunk
- Adjustable seats

The model is packed with half stud offsets to capture the lines of the car in this scale. Here you can see both the steering setup and some of those half-stud constructions:

And a shot with all doors open. The model is quite sturdy and can be lifted from the roof, the rear and the front without trouble.

Comments and questions are welcome

Leg godt

Jeroen

 

[Lego2016Lego]

Wow! That looks so good.  I wish this was a set

[rm8]

Very Juicy model. Not much cars are known in this color. And orange Focus ST is the first that come to my mind. Shapes are not ideal (not your fault-small scale), but very recognizable

[Aventador2004]

I love it, and can you show more of the vpp steering?

And, I know it would have been hard, but it is fwd, not rear. But total complements.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Aventador2004

[TechnicRCRacer]

Now this is what I'm talking about! Absolutely amazing! I love vehicles in this scale and the orange looks great!

[BusterHaus]

Very nice shape, and the pictures look great!  Good use of the tusk/bone part.

[Thorsten50]

A new must have. Very nice.

[AFOLegofan66]

great looking car, Thanks for all the great photo's!!

[ginger-snapped]

Looks great! Love the curves. The steering fascinates me. Any chance we get a video that shows it off?

[Paul Boratko]

Excellent..!

 

 

[Leonardo da Bricki]

Wow! Instantly recognizable car! The body beautiful, the shaping is excellent!

Any chance of a video? Or some photos of the car without the bodywork? I would love to see more of the structure underneath.

[JonathanM]

That steering is a thing of beauty. Great work!

[Isamudyson]

So nice and clean. I aspire to be able to do even simple body work like this

[DugaldIC]

I'm not sure about this one. I mean I can recognize that it's a focus(ish) but I don't feel the scaling is all that great when compared to an actual Focus ST. 

-The wheel base is a bit short, the roof too tall the rear half doesn't match the shape of the car, the dash seems a little too tall and the whole car seems a bit squished/stubby. 

-The seats are to far forward and seem to be out of place.

-I'm personally not a fan of the awkward dead space (around the wheel arches for instance) the rest of the body seems to be covered so well it seems a shame to leave the few random spots open.

-I do like your solution for the top of the headlights though, that's quite a clever bit. 

Don't get me wrong I know in a small scale you can only do so much however I think the things I mentioned could've been represented better?! I mean maybe it's just me, as I am a bit picky with my taste/builds. I hope you take this all as constructive criticism,  as I know you have the capability to do better in my opinion. 

[technic_addict]

4 hours ago, DugaldIC said:

I'm not sure about this one. I mean I can recognize that it's a focus(ish) but I don't feel the scaling is all that great when compared to an actual Focus ST. 

-The wheel base is a bit short, the roof too tall the rear half doesn't match the shape of the car, the dash seems a little too tall and the whole car seems a bit squished/stubby.

I agree that it looks much too short / stubby.  I may be wrong here but didn't the focus st always come as four door?  This feels more like a fiesta st with 18" wheels.

[Jeroen Ottens]

13 hours ago, LvdH said:

Amazing  instantly recognisable. I like the use of that tusk above the headlights. Will there be instructions or was there an exclusivety agreement?

There was no exclusivity agreement, but I didn't make a complete digital model, so instructions will not be possible.

 

13 hours ago, Aventador2004 said:

I love it, and can you show more of the vpp steering?

And, I know it would have been hard, but it is fwd, not rear. But total complements.

I know, I know, but as you say, at this scale FWD is nigh impossible. The vpp steering is nothing more complicated than what you see. The steering column is connected to the rotor piece. The 0.5*5L liftarms transfer the movement to the thick 5L liftarms. The trick is that the pivotpoints at the frame are 3 studs apart (center to center), whereas at the wheel they are 2 studs apart. This creates two diagonal lines that virtually cross each other somewhere at the center of the wheel. Another advantage of this setup is that the wheel is now at a half stud offset. The #3 connectors are at a full stud distance, so that gives a nice half a stud clearance for the wheels. Since the virtual pivotpoint will actually move around when steered the wheel stays within the 7 studs space at all angles. In that sense it is quite a neat mechanism for cars at this scale.

9 hours ago, ginger-snapped said:

Looks great! Love the curves. The steering fascinates me. Any chance we get a video that shows it off?

Sorry, the model is already at the customer. But as explained above, the steering is not more complicated than what you see on the bellyshot.

7 hours ago, Leonardo da Bricki said:

Wow! Instantly recognizable car! The body beautiful, the shaping is excellent!

Any chance of a video? Or some photos of the car without the bodywork? I would love to see more of the structure underneath.

The body is pretty integrated into the structure of the car (so far I haven't been able to design a separate body for any of my cars). And since the model is no longer in my possession a video will not be possible (there is not too much to show I thought).

6 hours ago, Isamudyson said:

So nice and clean. I aspire to be able to do even simple body work like this

Practice, practice and practice and you will be able to.

5 hours ago, DugaldIC said:

I'm not sure about this one. I mean I can recognize that it's a focus(ish) but I don't feel the scaling is all that great when compared to an actual Focus ST. 

-The wheel base is a bit short, the roof too tall the rear half doesn't match the shape of the car, the dash seems a little too tall and the whole car seems a bit squished/stubby. 

-The seats are to far forward and seem to be out of place.

-I'm personally not a fan of the awkward dead space (around the wheel arches for instance) the rest of the body seems to be covered so well it seems a shame to leave the few random spots open.

-I do like your solution for the top of the headlights though, that's quite a clever bit. 

Don't get me wrong I know in a small scale you can only do so much however I think the things I mentioned could've been represented better?! I mean maybe it's just me, as I am a bit picky with my taste/builds. I hope you take this all as constructive criticism,  as I know you have the capability to do better in my opinion. 

Here is a picture of the actual model:

As you can see this particular model is quite short because it is only a two door version. The roof is a tad too high though, you spotted that well. It is a consequence of the high dashboard, which was a consequence of the slightly too high bonnet, which was needed to fit the engine above the steering system...
The seats are adjustable, so you can move them further back if you want.
The dead space above the front wheels bugged me as well, but I was not able to come up with a pretty solution for this area. So in the end I decided that I preferred the attention to the curved lines instead of trying to fill the gap with a clutter of parts.

1 hour ago, technic_addict said:

I agree that it looks much too short / stubby.  I may be wrong here but didn't the focus st always come as four door?  This feels more like a fiesta st with 18" wheels.

The two door version is not a very common version, but as shown above it does exist.

Thank you all for your comments, it is much appreciated.

[DugaldIC]

@Jeroen Ottens that's the one angle where it looks similar. 

It's from the side that you notice everything. Anyways those are just my thoughts. 

Could you not put in a little bit of system Lego in the dead space, to fill it in? It looks like you could attach it to the underside of the liftarms above the wheel arches. 

 

Edited July 15, 2017 by DugaldIC

[Myers Lego Technic]

Hmm. I personally know that it is more than possible to fit independent suspensions (double wish-bones even) on a model of this size WITH VPP.  Maybe you chose to leave that out for a reason, or maybe the customer requested it to be so, but I personally miss its presence. 

[Victor Imaginator]

Incredibly cute car) And this strange "horn" part outlining front lights. Not any other part will fit better here.

[Meatman]

I like it. But it would have been more impressive if it had front wheel drive like the real car.

[Vectormatic]

I agree with DugaldlC, the rear of the car is clearly much too short, like someone took a focus ST and chopped a foot out of the wheelbase and ran the back into a wall.

Other then that though, i think this is a very good effort, the front especially, but id lengthen the wheelbase (judging by eye, the technic model is slightly over 2 wheels between the wheels, the real car has nearly 3 wheels of wheelbase.)

[Polo-Freak]

@Jeroen Ottens 

nice Model :-)

there are Pics from the Rear View?

[Jeroen Ottens]

On 7/16/2017 at 5:47 PM, vectormatic said:

I agree with DugaldlC, the rear of the car is clearly much too short, like someone took a focus ST and chopped a foot out of the wheelbase and ran the back into a wall.

Other then that though, i think this is a very good effort, the front especially, but id lengthen the wheelbase (judging by eye, the technic model is slightly over 2 wheels between the wheels, the real car has nearly 3 wheels of wheelbase.)

No worries, I used Sariel's scaler to size my model, the dimensions are correct within a stud to the blueprint I used. Maybe you have a different version in mind (or maybe somebody put a blueprint on the web that was completely off)?

 

On 7/17/2017 at 10:00 AM, Polo-Freak said:

@Jeroen Ottens 

nice Model :-)

there are Pics from the Rear View?

Here you go (not the best looking part of the car I must admit):

 

 

On 7/15/2017 at 3:45 PM, DugaldIC said:

@Jeroen Ottens that's the one angle where it looks similar. 

It's from the side that you notice everything. Anyways those are just my thoughts. 

Could you not put in a little bit of system Lego in the dead space, to fill it in? It looks like you could attach it to the underside of the liftarms above the wheel arches. 

 

Hmm... This indeed looks different. However I used this blueprint:

As you can see this model is a lot stubbier than yours...

 

[JamesJT]

The blue print you used looks good against the real car and it matches most of your MOC.

[DugaldIC]

@Jeroen Ottens I think I know what the problem is with the picture you used. Is it's a simplified drawing of a side profile picture of a car. This meaning due to depth and perspective of a vehicle a side profile picture always looks shorter. So if you are to lay the picture of a car over the blueprints of it, it will never line up a 100% especially toward the front and rear of a car. But seeing as the blueprint you used lines up with the picture of a car I'd say thats the issue. It looks like you did scale it okay according to the pictures you used, minus the back half. I hope this makes sense? I know whenever I'm choosing photos for scaling I'm always very particular and cross reference to make sure that it's accurate!