Category: Small Family 
Price Range: £12,795 to £21,445
Excellent dynamics, comfortable, safe and good range of low CO2 engines.
Korean competition offers better value.
Leads the class for drive, but not for value.
The original Ford Focus made the car industry sit up and notice when it was first launched in 1997, setting new standards for the small family hatchback market. Its sharp looks stunned with a superb drive and brought unrivalled packaging to the segment.
Evolution was the key for the Mark II Focus, with Ford fearful of messing with a phenomenally successful formula. The second generation refined and improved the small hatch, ensuring it remained top of the pile for ability and sales.
Indeed, the Focus has led the sales charts every year for the past nine years, an astonishing record that Ford is unsurprisingly keen to extend. So just three years on, with at least another three to go before it's replaced, the second generation Focus has gone under the knife.
The Focus shares its basic underpinnings with the more upmarket (and expensive) Volvo S40 and V50 and the Mazda3, plus with the Focus C-Max compact MPV. It's available as a three- or five-door hatchback, a roomy estate, four-door saloon or even as a folding metal roofed coupe-cabriolet (which will be updated in line with the facelift in March 2008). A high-performance ST version, with a 225bhp turbocharged 2.5-litre engine as in the Volvo S40/V50 T5, will also be available in refreshed form in March 2008.
On the exterior, only the roof panel carries over from the original Mk II design, the Focus inheriting the new design language introduced by the Mondeo. Swept-back headlamps and a large trapezoidal front grille dominate.
Under the skin the Focus remains unchanged, but the Ford gains a new Powershift dual clutch gearbox in March 2008 to replace the unloved CVT-auto.
With environmental concerns pressing, the brand has also launched a range of ECOnetic models that reduce CO2 outputs to as low as 114g/km on certain models, thanks to improved aerodynamics and mechanical revisions.
Prices rise on average by £250, but ESP now becomes standard across the range.
Price Range for the Focus is £11,945 - £20,595.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Ford Focus
wrote on 05 10 2007
wrote on 19 09 2007
wrote on 12 09 2007
wrote on 26 07 2007