I'm ssooooooooooo sorry about your car eating you out of house and home. Anyway...
Okay, enough Clarksonianism.
For starters, what you've gotten isn't the 'SVT Lifestyle.' What you have gotten is the 'SVT
Focus Lifestyle.' Just go check with the SVT Club of North Texas (the one Ford themselves used as a model to set up SVTOA) - most SVT products were quite good. But not the Focus. They're usually found in poor condition and well known to be money pits.
There were a number of reasons for this:
1. The first owners were almost invariably kids that didn't take any care of them and drove them like they were disposable. 99+% of them have been ragged to within or beyond an inch of their life.
2. The engine was reportedly developed by Cosworth. The more Cosworth has to do with your engine, the more power it makes - and the shorter a life it has. Cosworth has yet to figure out how to make a powerful engine last a long, long, long time. Much of their tweaks involve shaving engine parts down to as thin and light as possible that they'll just make it out of warranty, as best I can tell - and this is their standard operating procedure unless the client stands over them and ensures they don't.
3. It was the sports version of
the most recalled car in American motor history.
What's worse is... when you bought this car, these were well known issues all over the Internet. Everyone who did any research would have discovered that these things were fast but fragile and broke a lot and cost a lot of money. Apparently you somehow missed it or didn't look. Or deliberately ignored it. Strike one.
As you admitted, even though you knew better, you trusted Carfax and didn't really have the car checked out. Strike two.
Next, if I recall correctly, you bought the thing in part because your fianc?e/wife liked it. From what you've related of her, she doesn't seem real car savvy. We'll call this one ball one.
Finally, when it looked like it was going the way of all SVT Foci (down the money hole, back in January), instead of realizing what was going on, cutting your losses and selling it to a stupid kid on Craigslist, you have continued to pour money into it. Strike three, you're done.
So, yeah, you screwed up. You and your wallet are paying for this mistake, but you need to move on. You can't just sit here and dwell on the fail.
Okay, so what have we learned from this? Aside from, "Don't buy an SVT Focus (or any of its direct competitors for similar reasons)"?
1. Do the research. Do the research. Do the research. Do the research. Do not ignore information you do not want to see. Do not automatically discard trouble reports as corner cases or flukes; if you see more than a couple reports of something failing, dig deeper. Oh, and did I mention, do the research?
2. Ignore your lady's opinions on cars other than for aesthetic reasons and determining what market segment to look in. She apparently has no feel for mechanicals; best to present her with a short list of good candidates and ask her to pick from them.
3. Any specialty car like an SVT you are interested in should be thoroughly examined prior to purchase either by a shop or by someone familiar with the specific model. Yes, even a brand new one. Hand-assembled does
not automatically mean better quality; it means 'more opportunities to screw up.'
4. It's okay to let your heart lead when you're looking at cars (unless you're captain70s or rickhamilton, in which case it isn't.) Just be sure to make sure you check with your head (the one on your shoulders) before you actually go buy it. Asking friends and forum members helps too.
Here's what you need to do now: You need to change the oil out for Valvoline MaxLife in the appropriate weight, then stick some Lucas Engine Oil Stop Leak in it. Then you need to wash the car, including the undercarriage, and you need to trade it in to some dealership on another vehicle. You need to do this now, not next week and not after something else has gone wrong and consumed your money. The way the market is now, they might not take a good look at it and they'll get stuck with it when things go wrong. It will be the dealer's (and their insurance company's) problem, not yours. That's what they're for.
Regarding the European car owner's experience - most of us Euro car owners don't have anything near that bad a time as you've had with the F**kus. Except maybe the VW/VAG people. Most of the rest of us don't have quite those issues, that regularly or that nasty to fix - so don't let this put you off the Euro marques either.
Whatever you're interested in, post up a thread here; I'm certain others would be happy to debate out the pros and cons of whatever candidate you have in mind. If nothing else, you can get pointed to the forums for the vehicle so you can do more research.
By the way, what's a timing chain replacement for a 2001 CVPI running at employee cost, these days?
(Alternately, maybe you can help me get the damn thing fixed under the TSB/silent recall for fleet operators for the 2001 tensioner issue.)