Driven All-New Ford Focus

We deliver our verdict as Ford goes to town with bigger, better family hatchback to take fight to VW Golf and Kia Ceed

- Andreas May

THE village of Siebenbach in the Eifel region of Germany is behind us; there’s a narrow, hilly, winding, freshly renovated road ahead and we’re at the wheel of the all-new Ford Focus – which is once again proving that car-driving heaven can only be delivered when the chassis isn’t steering you into hell.

The Mk3 version of Ford’s hatch has been feeling its age – threatened by everything from the VW Golf to the all new Kia Ceed. So Ford has really pulled out the stops for the fourth generation with a fresh platform. It’s called C2 and is designed to deliver even more agile handling, while improving cabin space.

Our drive in the new Focus will take us from Cologne to Saarlouis in Germany and back (around 300 miles). Ford says the car was developed in the first of those cities and then is brought to life in the second, the location of its factory.

The new model has some known quantities in its engine line-up. There’s the 1.0-litre three-cylinder EcoBoost petrol, in three states of tune: 84bhp, 99bhp and the 123bhp unit tested here, with CO2 emissions as low as 108g/km. If you want more poke from your petrol, then there’s the three-cylinder 1.5-litre EcoBoost, with 148bhp and 180bhp. A range of new EcoBlue diesels is also available: 1.5-litre units with 94bhp or 118bhp, and a 2.0 engine with 148bhp.

The standard gearbox is a six-speed manual, but you can have a new eight speed automatic on the 123bhp 1.0 and 148bhp 1.5 petrols, along with the 118bhp 1.5 and 2.0 diesels.