http://www.jsonline.com/wheels/peak/nov02/93157.asp

A little quote from the article:

"Ford has sold 817,552 Focus cars in the U.S. since 1999, according to Autodata Corp. figures. The recalls announced today represent 70% of that total"

By comparison the 3 recalls on the Civic totalled approximately 186,000 cars out of 700,000 sold, or roughly 26%. It has since had no recalls and is not currently the subject of any investigations.

On the TSB's ..
www.alldata.com provides TSB information. According to this the Civic had 26 TSB's in 2001 and 3 in 2002. The Focus had 30 in 2000 and then if you wade through all of the recalls you will see that it had 30 again in 2001. Looks obvious to me that Honda's reputation for steadily improving and maintaining the quality of their products is at work while Ford is showing why they are near the bottom on most consumer quality surveys in the US.

The Euro-built Focus' quality does not do US buyers any good. That does not speak alot for Ford's manufacturing and quality control process if a car can have stellar reliability in 1 country and terrible reliability in another. Honda is highly rated throughout all of it's markets.

You can harp on the oil consumption and the rattles if you like but it's interesting to note that the reviewers themselves had no significant problems with either issue. They had no unscheduled repairs and in the end they enthusiastically recommended the CTR and said that they actually missed it. Additionally, the CTR engine is not identical to the engine that we get here in the US. It's more closely related to the Acura RSX-S engine.

"another problem is that my car looses oil. from 7500 to 15000 miles it burned 2 quarts and in the last 1000 miles it burned 1 quart, which is now mobil 1 and kind of expensive."

And

"I have been checking RSX Type S's oil levels before I change oil & I can tell you they are oil consumers.Most are at least 1 quart low after about 3k.If you wait longer they will be even lower."

And

"I think acura is feeding customers a line here. There is no way a car should consume 1 qt of oil for every 1000K, that means that for the life of the average oil change you will put at least 3-4 qt's of oil in the car?. I'm ready to go in and return the car; I refuse to incur cost for someone else’s mistake."

And

"I check my oil 1-2 times per week. For the first 4300 miles it used .2 quarts, and 5000 miles later at the second oil change another .2 quarts. I now have 11,000 miles and I have used about .3 quarts in the last 2000 miles."

And
 
"do you guys think we should collect signature and send it to Acura for oil comsumption problem, because i remember that Chris or someone did collect our name and VIN# for the 2nd grind before just wondering should we do the same thing for Oil consumption???????"
 
And
 
"This is my 3rd Homda product as well. The other two have never burned a drop of oil. My car doesn't burn quite as much as yours, but it's about 1 quart every 1,500 to 2,000 miles."
 
And so on...

Thank you, anonymousposts.
You kinda pushed me in the right direction so I was able to find an answer to my question.

Good luck with your Civic.
It's not on my list anymore.