GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

THESE DAYS, IF you see a red telephone box, you're probably in a conservation area.

- CHRIS HAINING

And it probably doesn't even have a phone in it-perhaps a mini library or a defibrillator instead. It's a far cry from what Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's design classic represented at the beginning; 35,000 K6 phone boxes were in situ by 1940, bringing instant communication to many villages for the first time.

Now, it's not as if - before the 1998 Ford Focus - we didn't have cars. But getting behind the wheel of a Focus after driving its predecessor, the Ford Escort, was like suddenly being able to text after years of trudging to the Post Office to send a telegram.

Available as a hatchback, an estate and, initially, a saloon, the Focus was brilliant to drive, very practical and reasonably priced.