I will say when I get a bit of motorway driving my car is very frugal doing around 50mpg, but at the moment most my driving is around towen an A/B roads so lucky to see 30mpg! Then again regarding the low down torque issue, my first/last car was a diesel, so getting into this was a shock

I just replaced my droplinks as I had some hanging about and the mechanic said my old ones were perfectly fine.

Glad it's not just me who finds the seats terrible aswell!

Also what I will mention is the standard Focus brakes aint too great either. I've replaced all mine Discs, pads, drums, bearings, shoes and replaced the Fluid but they fade pretty quickly in my opinion and they aint too great to start with.
If I can find ST170 hubs and calipers easilly then I'l upgrade to 170 brakes. If I can't then I'm going to look into fitting Fiesta MK5 hubs and looking towards the upgrades avalible to the MK5 fiesta.