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Filthy – but sadly frothy – five door fun: Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec

Sensible trousers time?

Vulture at the Wheel The original Ford Focus was an incredible car. The latest generation has a lot to live up to.

The man behind the Focus was Richard Parry-Jones, who, with incredible attention to detail, produced a reasonably priced car that handled well.

He also got the designers, who were bright young things, to wear ageing suits, gloves and glasses, following the principles of inclusive design, which won huge plaudits.

Yet Parry-Jones retired in 2007 and the replacement Focus was the difficult second album. The dashboard was re-designed along the lines of a mobile phone – and drivers found it incredibly confusing.

Ford Focus multi-function display. Pic: Simon Rockman

Bewildering: Here you see the radio, phone connection, location and the date - all in one view

The 2015 Ford Focus falls somewhere in between. It’s a nice small car which is pleasant to drive but, for the price, a little low on toys. There is a good weight to the power steering which loads up nicely and it’ll scythe around roundabouts. The 120PS isn’t enough to provoke a front-wheel-drive shimmy thanks to the excellent chassis and torque vectoring control. Ride is good, even in the back. The six speed gearbox is smooth and brakes progressive positive.

On our test it did get very dirty very quickly. This might have been the dreadful weather but we suspect there is something going on around airflow which contributed to this.

Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec getting a wash. Pic: Simon Rockman

Mucky: We had to pay this bloke to give our Focus a scrub

This greenest Focus is a very economical car – urban mpg of 65.7, combined mpg of 74.3 and with quite a bit of motorway driving “keeping up with the traffic” we saw 54mpg. This gives a fabulous range of over 800 miles.

The CO2 rating of 98g/km and great fuel economy mean it’s class A for road tax purposes – i.e. there isn't any on this car – but it’s not low enough to be exempt from the London Congestion Tax Charge: that sets the bar at 75g/km.

The Focus Zetec is a good-looking car. Ours was helped by the optional “Deep Impact Blue” paint (£525), though the squinty halogen headlights with a black surround are standard. Even the cool 5 x 2 spoke 16” alloys are standard. Wind-up windows in the back are however a bit cheap. It’s low on toys, no parking sensors (parking assist is available as an option) and you have to remember to switch the lights on when it gets dark.

None of the latest gew-gaws, such as blind spot indicators or rain-sensitive wipers, were present. It does have auto-stop and, even better, a button to switch auto-stop off.

Space in the back is decent and with the seats down measures up as 1,215 litres in the boot, which was plenty for a trip to take a knackered 720p 42” plasma telly to the tip. Sorry, “recycling centre”.

Ford Focus boot. Pic: Simon Rockman

Rear end: Fold the seats down and you get just over 1,200 litres of storage space here

The weakest aspect is the infotainment system. When we reviewed the Fiesta Black we criticised the man-machine interface for its choc-a-bloc buttons. That was Ford Sync 1.0. The Focus here is Sync 2.0. That goes completely in the opposite direction and has very few buttons. The result is very nearly as confusing, not least because features such as returning to the sat-nav when in a journey is only possible through a short-cut. There is no main menu option.

Learning your way around the UI takes time. This is not A Good Thing. While those who buy a Focus Zetec might be prepared to put in the effort, Ford needs to sell into the hire-car market and this is not up to muster for that. Discoverability needs to be a lot better and in particular it needs to understand the concept of button loading, where there are hard knobs and buttons which have simple, overarching functions and which can function as shortcuts. The screen does fill that function in this Ford but it really needs shortcut UI buttons that are more fixed and obvious.

All this is a shame because there are some nice features buried in the menus. A “how green is my driving” measure of speed, anticipation are included along with a gear change (they seem to disappear when you are driving, which might be a safety thing).

Ford Focus steering wheel. Pic: Simon Rockman

Controls: A not-quite-driver's eye view of the Ford Focus dashboard

The DAB radio proved too confusing and we never managed to locate Radio 4. Sound quality was pretty decent given that the DAB and SYNC2 are a £500 option. Certainly it's much less than car manufacturers usually charge for such electronics.

At £19,495 (£20,605 for the configuration we tested) the Focus isn’t cheap and doesn’t quite excite as much as the original Focus did, but it’s the kind of car you’d be perfectly happy with as a company car.

Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec engine. Pic: Simon Rockman

Lump: The 1.5 Zetec engine in the 2015 Ford Focus

If you want thrills you’d be much better off with one of these and a Caterham for the weekend than a £40,000 car, although of course you’d have twice the running costs and insurance, the Focus being mid-ranking on the latter as it falls into Group 16.

You would, however, have the best of both worlds. ®

Filthy – but sadly frothy – five door fun: Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec

Quiet, comfortable, nice enough to drive and exceptionally economical. This is about arriving not driving.
Price: £20,605 as tested RRP

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