Focus on the driver

The Ford Focus ST delivers on performance, price and practicality, says Pete Burnard...

THE ST badge might suggest that the latest addition to the Ford Focus range is a warm hatch rather than a hot one. But it's not.

Getting to 60mph in a whisker over six seconds on the way to a top speed north of 150mph was, not so very long ago, the preserve of supercars.

The Focus ST manages it – and there's much more to this Focus than mere performance figures – impressive as they are.

There's the price, for starters.

Settle for the lowest of the three specs – called simply ST – and it can be in your driveway with change from £19k and the estate for not much more.

Five doors....Estates…?

Yes. This is a car for all reasons. Granted, the focus (sorry but it's hard to avoid the word) is on performance and driver enjoyment.

But the ST offers so much more than hooning around test tracks and Welsh B roads so it makes sense for it to come in two handy, family-friendly packages.

And fast estates are great fun – I have fond memories of my Dalmatians sitting haughty in the boot and looking down on the sports cars that my Opel Ascona estate used to blow away a full 40 years ago.

Aaaah memory lane – never mind, back to the present and my spin in Bougourd Ford's demonstrator, a hatch in mid-range ST-2 trim.

The styling is reasonably restrained – a roof spoiler, 18-inch alloys, twin-hexagonal central tailpipe and the eponymous badges set the ST apart from lesser Focuses.

Avoid the Tangerine Scream colour option and it's a pretty effective Q-car wolf in sheep's clothing.

Ford cabins are bang on the money these days and the ST's boasts Recaro seats developed with Ford input specifically for the car – yes they are as good as that sounds.

And the oil temperature, pressure and turbo boost gauges in a small dash-top binnacle angled towards the driver are evocative of earlier performance Fords.

So is the soundtrack of the engine; it's a sound that Ford has gone to great lengths to tune and to let into into the cabin during hard acceleration.

The rest of the time engine noise is pleasantly subdued.

So the exhaust is a bit Jekyll and Hyde – a good metaphor for the ST.

Drive it gently – change up when the discreet prompts tells you – and the ST potters serenely and economically along with the ordinary traffic.

Hit the gas and as the tacho needle moves past 1,500rpm the nose rises and the scenery goes into fast forward.

The in-gear acceleration is even more impressive than the 0-60 time suggests. Powerful front-drivers lose out by not being able to get all the power down at take-off which takes the edge off their acceleration figures.

Powerful front-drivers are prone to another affliction, too, torque steer.

While some more-expensive opposition engineer expensively around the problem with extra suspension knuckles, Ford uses an electronic torque steer compensator that inputs forces into the electric power steering system to neutralise the unwanted inputs from the road wheels.

It works pretty well although if you do deploy all 250 pferdestarke when the surface under the front wheels is less than billiard-table smooth, you will need to apply some correction smartish.

Ford could have designed more torque steer out but decided against it.

Look upon it as part of the driving experience.

And there's no expensive Quaife differential like the old RS sported.

Instead there is a torque vectoring system that brakes the inside wheel during hard cornering and transfers the power to the more heavily-loaded outside wheel.

It seems to do the job pretty well – and of course bolting on the extra software to the electronic stability programme rather than installing the old RS's Quaife diff helps keep the price down.

Not that Ford have skimped on the driver satisfaction front.

They went to great lengths to make the throttle amenable to a bit of heel-and-toe blipping during downward changes.

As for the handling, Ford has been setting the benchmark in several market segments of late and the ordinary Focus is no exception.

The ST is even better.

Quiet-road corners are a joy.

The variable ratio steering helps: as you move the wheel away from dead ahead the steering weights up and quickens up.

With just 1.8 turns from lock to lock there's no need for arm-flailing and hardly any need to shuffle your mitts around and take another handful of lock.

The Focus is keen to tuck its nose into the apex and lifting off mid corner will get the rear end coming out to play – the stability programme can be dialled out either partially or fully.

With its uprated shock absorbers and springs, the Focus ST rides 10mm lower than other models and does so – on its 18-inch alloys and specially designed Goodyear Eagles – surprisingly comfortably.

Big discs, 320mm up front and 271mm at the rear, complete the ST package.

And it really is a compelling one.

Hot hatch, family hatch, load lugger – in ST guise the Focus is arguably the best all-rounder this side of a Land Rover Discovery.

It's just compact enough to be an easy local companion and to be able to use some of the performance here.

It's roomy enough for the family, comfy enough for the grandparents and appeals strongly to drivers of both the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde persuasions.

Then there's the price.

This is the latest in a long line of high performance Fords.

And undercutting key rivals by thousands of pounds, in terms of bang per buck it has to be one of the greatest.

Even with option pack goodies and metallic paint, the ST2 test car offered change from £21k and that is cracking value these days.

It's easy to spend more on a worse car.

But not to spend less on a better one.