Oh, far from it -- merely the last in a line of previous failures! Most didn't get a Ford badge, though -- the Capri came over as a Mercury in the '70s, and then Merkur (remember them?) got the Scorpio and the Sierra (the latter rebadged as the XR4Ti). Mercury got a few other oddballs over the years -- the '99-'02 Cougar was a Mondeo-based Ford model in Europe, and perhaps the worst was the '91-'94 Capri that hailed from Australia.

The only previous one I know of that was imported as a Ford was the Mk1 Fiesta. It was reasonably successful, but the economics of importing a subcompact from Europe didn't really work. The Festiva that replaced it was a Kia.

The '81-'90 Escort in the US was intended as a "world car," and was based on the Mk3 European model, but was basically a different car by the time they got done with it.

The Focus has obviously been a bigger success, though we never got the Mk2.