My husband and I were in dire straits of having to buy a new vehicle after our "no problems at all" Toyota Camry saw her last running day. We ventured out to local dealerships to find a car specifically for my husband's hour commute to work everyday. We were looking for a new car that was a reasonable amount of money, something that will last us for at least 8-10 years, gets good gas mileage, 4 door sedan for easy towing of children and if possible a good looking car. We found the car that we thought would be a good edition to what we needed. We bought a 2005 Ford Focus ST at a reasonable price. It has everything that we really did not need but thought what the hell. It is a 5 speed manual transmission. (Ford Focus ST's only come in 5 speed manuals.) My husband wasn't too keen on the idea of having to constantly shift gears in rush hour traffic but after test driving the other Focus', this ST was the "better" one in our eyes. We drove off the dealership lot and kissed our money good bye. My husband was driving while I was in the passenger seat. I was playing with the CD Player when my husband says to me, "What is the deal? I can't find 3rd gear!" I laughed thinking it has definitely been awhile since he has driven a 5 speed. I thought I would be coy and point to where 3rd gear was for him. But the reality of it was he wasn't kidding... we did not have 3rd, 4th, or 5th gear at all. The gear shift would only go in 1st or 2nd gear and at the time we were traveling up a huge hill. My husband had briefly thought he may not have pushed the clutch all the way down. So he smashed the clutch into the engine and I tried to put the gear shift into some other gears but simply could not unless we really wanted to strip the gears. We turned that Focus right back around and slowly in 2nd gear took that POS back to the dealership. It was a Saturday and heaven forbid that the shop workers work on a Saturday. We talked to the sales manager, told him what happened and he seemed all surprised. (Of course!) He gave us a loaner car until Monday when the shop workers will come in to look at our brand new 2005 POS. The sales manager told us as we were getting into the loaner car for the rest of the weekend that he would prepare a "I'm sorry" package deal for us. We just told him - thank you that would be nice to do. Even though we were seeing red at the moment. My husband and I had some serious second thoughts about that car. Was this a fluke with the transmission or was this going to be a problem that we shouldn't have to deal with on a brand new car? Our new POS Ford didn't even have 50 miles on it yet. Monday morning came and we were told that the accelerator cable popped off. Under warranty it went and we picked up our POS Ford that day.(No "I'm sorry" package was waiting for us. All we got was just a "here's your keys" dangling from the sales managers fat fingers.) My husband drove our new POS Ford to work everyday for about a week and a half until it was in the shop again. This time I was driving our new POS Ford. I had just taken a turn in 2nd gear off a busy intersection to find that I had to stop very quickly to avoid some idiot who thought his blinkers came optional on his vehicle. When I had stopped very quickly I had thrown the gear in neutral. Luckily, I was not at a busy intersection and close to my destination. I was able to continue on my way again, so I put the POS in first gear and it wouldn't move. I thought ok, driving a 5 speed is second nature to me but maybe I forgot to push the clutch in... nope, clutch is smashed to the floor and I am showing I am in first gear. Still the POS was not moving. I turned the key off and tried again... still nothing. So I called my friend, whose house I was going to - to come down the road and help me move my new POS out of the road. It turned out that our new POS Ford would go FORWARD in ONLY REVERSE! While my friend was driving forward in reverse in our new POS- the reverse lights in the back weren't even on. I called Roadside Assistance with Ford to find out that they will tow your new vehicle up 35 miles. I was about 65 miles away from the FORD dealership! So we paid the extra money to have it towed to the dealership that we bought our new POS from. (This happened on a Friday - and the shop workers had already gone home - so we had to wait to get our car back on Monday.) Monday morning the shop manager calls our home to ask for my husband. I told the shop manager that my husband was unavailable and to just tell me what is wrong this time with our POS Ford. He actually laughed at me on the phone and said, "Well, I need to talk to your husband about what we found wrong." I was ready to come through the phone and strangle that judgemental pig. I took a deep breath to calm down and told him that he had better tell me what is wrong with our car. He insisted to talk to my husband. It took me five point two seconds to drive down to that dealership. My plan was to hang that body shop manager by his toenails. I might be a woman but I know I can run circles around half of his shop workers anytime and any place. After getting into the body shop manager's face and making it well known to people in a mile radius of my anger towards him - I was told that a clip that holds onto the gears had popped off and broke. I rolled my eyes and said, "a piece, huh? Would that "piece" be plastic?" The body shop manager had the balls to look at me square in the eye and tell me - no. I found that hard to believe seeing that every car built nowadays have so much plastic on vehicles that you could have a tupperware party by stripping a car. I gave him another chance to redeem himself and asked him again, "Was the piece plastic?" He took his eyes off me, shifted his weight and told me again. 'No!'. I said, "Ok, show me the piece then." He said, "Well, I would but it popped off and broke." I said, "Well, then how do you know it was that piece that has basically stripped the gears again?" Besides that how the hell would he know what the problem was if he doesn't even know what the piece is? I could clearly tell I had officially pissed him off and he wanted me out of his face. But I didn't move. I asked him again like a parent would ask their child a question if they were lying. "Do you have the piece in this shop that you are saying needs to be replaced on our vehicle?" He then must have had a light bulb flash beyond his eyes because he went to get the piece that has supposedly "popped off and broke" on our new POS Ford. When he dropped the PLASTIC PIECE in my hand - it didn't look to me that it was broken by any means. I couldn't help myself though... I said, "HA, looky here, do my eyes deceive me or is this a little ole piece plastic?!" The body shop manager stood in silence. I said, "Sooo, this is broken, eh?" He wouldn't answer me. Awesome customer service I would have to say about that guy. Ended up that "Ford" couldn't diagnose the problem as to why our POS didn't have gears but only reverse in which it drove forward. So they told me that they would have to bring in an engineer to look over our car. I told them to save my time and rebuild the whole transmission or give us our money back. Of course, they didn't want to do that. My husband came in at the tail end of the ordeal- undoubtly knowing that I had taken care of most of it. This wonderful world we live in - my husband got them to do what needed to be done. My husband ordered for them to check a recall on the transmission. When they did that little ole plastic piece needed to be replaced with a metal clip instead. So all in all, our new 2005 POS has only seen the highways a whole week and a half since we bought it. The rest of the time, it sits in the body shop. We haven't even licensed the vehicle yet - we are still on the temp tags. So to anyone looking for a 2005 Ford Focus ST - Don't waste your time nor effort in buying one - they are what FORD stands for - "FOUND ON ROAD DEAD"! Unfortunately, as we understand that we can't do a damn thing about this because for one - one more repair of the same problem would constitute under the lemon law. (We only have had two repairs for the same thing.) And for two - they offer the buy back program but Ford is giving us the run around at the moment and not wanting to budge on this brand new 2005 POS!