UPDATE: When I went to the dealership to pick up my car after having the clutches replaced, my Service Advisor saw me standing at the cashier counter, so he approached me and he described to me what they found wrong with the car, what parts they replaced and what I should expect going forward, given that I just had new clutches installed. He handed me a piece of paper which describes the DC transmission and what type of sounds, sensations and behaviors I should expect going forward. Basically, it was making the case that I should expect some shuddering, vibration, etc, especially during the break-in period.
Well, there's about 100 miles on the new clutches so far and I'm very pleased to say that I haven't experienced any of those issues....YET. I'm hopeful that this has solved the problem, but I'm cautiously optimistic. As I said before, only time will tell. Given the fact that the clutches are so new and haven't been broken in, I'm completely surprised that I haven't experienced any of the shuddering, jerking, etc, such as I did when the car was brand new. I remember the first 1,500 miles or so the car behaved differently until it went past the break in period. As time went on, my MPG also improved. So at this stage, if the car was going to behave badly, I would expect this would be that time for it to shudder and vibrate me out of my seat. Again.....so far, knock on wood, it's actually driving like an automatic transmission.
One other thing...the Regional Customer Rep I've been dealing with is named, Melissa and she has been very helpful to me. She handles the dealerships in my area. For all the negative things that has been said about Ford and their people on this forum, I'd like to point out that there are people who work for the company who are caring, compassionate and driven to provide answers and solutions to their customers. In this case, that was Melissa. She listened in detail to what I described as the problem, she called the dealership to make schedule a service appointment and made arrangements for their transmission expert to take care of my car. She also authorized the cost of a loaner car. On top of that, she told me that she would be sending out a "customer sat" check to me as a gesture of goodwill and to make up for the inconvenience of the ongoing issues I've had with my car. Now THAT is SERVICE! I only wish I could have dealt with Melissa from the very beginning, because it would have saved me a year of aggravation.
So that's where things stand as of now. Again...hopefully this clutch job will permanently solve the problem I was experiencing. As for switching to a Fusion or something comparable, I will hold off on those plans until I can determine whether or not my Focus problem has truly been solved. If so, then the Focus stays, if not, then I'll be looking at replacing it with a Fusion. One other possibility might be going with a Focus ST.