Fast Facts

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The first Focus was a brilliant car to drive. Does the all-new model fill its shoes adequately?

By Leow Ju-Len

I’VE NEVER BEEN accused of being a rally driver (and if you’ve sat beside me in a car with me behind the wheel, you’ll know why), except for one time. During the launch of the first Ford Focus in 1998, a Tahitian journalist and I shared a car, punting it along country lanes in France that crossed open farmland.

“How was the drive?” asked the Ford guy when we rolled up at day’s end, the keys dangling from my outstretched fingers. “I think,” said my companion, hooking a thumb in my direction, “I’ve just spent a day with Ari Vatanen.”

It would have been nice to be compared to a more successful rally star, but in any case, I think the Focus should have shouldered most of the blame for my… exuberant driving seven years ago.

Mix the excellent visibility it offered with the scalpel-sharp steering and the front-end grip that made it dance through corners, and you couldn’t help but tackle each bend with Gran Turismo levels of gusto. The Focus certainly encouraged that sort of thing far more than the contemporary Opel Astra or VW Golf did.

So here we are in 2005 with Focus, The Next Generation. There’s more resemblance to the old car than with, say, Golfs IV and V, but look more closely and it’s clear that most of the original’s ‘New Edge’ brio has been ironed over, smoothening the car’s profile and tidying up its lines.

Where the sedan is concerned, the main impression is that of an infant Mondeo. The executive-car-scaled-down approach to the styling, as it turns out, suits the new Focus perfectly.