Faults:

Only one actual fault - a rattling tailgate which was adjusted by the dealer and has been fine ever since.

Gearbox oil leak caused by incompetent servicing at the dealer.

General Comments:

Excellent car let down only by poor dealers and some cheap and nasty interior plastics.

Still a thoroughly superb drive with a fantastic ride/handling compromise, lots of steering feel and great brakes. Even the gearbox is slick. You get the impression that the people who set up this car really care about driving. Performance is good, although maybe not as good as you might think given the power output and size of car.

The car is practical with good space inside and a large boot. The seats fold totally flat for large loads, and interior noise levels are low. Unfortunately, the interior is where the Focus shows its age however, with poor seats giving no shoulder support at all, and cheap, hard plastics everywhere. Build quality is good though, and it all feels very well screwed together.

Since the warranty ran out, I've stopped using Ford dealers. They are usually merely indifferent, but I (or rather my car) was the victim of two separate acts of unbelievable incompetence. The first was when they "forgot" to refit the gearbox oil level plug (causing an oil leak which was thankfully caught in time). Naturally I never went back there, but during the next service at another dealer, some idiot mixed up my locking wheelnut key with another car's which subsequently left me unable to change a punctured tyre (the AA guy had a master key, thankfully!). Got a gruff verbal apology and that was my lot!

It was this, plus getting sick of paying through the nose to have the car returned unwashed with oily finger prints all over it, and never being able to get a courtesy car that made me start getting the car serviced myself, with major work being entrusted to an excellent local independent. No small garage has a problem with working on a Focus, and my local mechanic tells me they're "bloody brilliant motors to work on". Maybe now I won't get charged UKP 4.20 + VAT for topping the screenwash up, and finding out two days later that they just used tap water. Incidentally, OEM Ford oils, filters and spares are available through many independent specialists for about 2/3 of dealer prices.

Purely in terms of the car itself though, if it were stolen or written off tomorrow, I'd buy another without hesitation.

Faults:

The electronic relay on the front wipers broke, but this was replaced under warranty by the local Ford dealer.

The front passenger-door speaker very occasionally stopped working; this is usually curable with a quick thump...

General Comments:

I have to admit that, before I test-drove the Focus, I doubted that I would like it.

The drive is surprisingly good; solid and stable with plenty of power from 2000 revs-per-minute onwards, but it sometimes feels like it needs a few more horses under the bonnet, so I'm hoping superchips will help me out on that one at some point soon.

Handling is GREAT for a car of its size - it managed the winding roads of the English Lake District and Pennine hills with consummate ease - the incident with the hump-back bridge was a one-off!

Having owned a 2.5 V6 Mondeo I was surprised that, by comparison, the Focus seems a far better all-round drive; basically due to it performing quite well in almost all areas. It is also far cheaper to run!

Its fuel economy is pretty good, though I've not reached anywhere near the Ford-quoted figure of 50.1 miles/gallon! It's perhaps my driving, but I don't think so!

The interior is functional, but little more than that. The velour upholstery is OK, whilst the plastic panelling is fairly solid, but, again, no more than just "OK". Dials and displays are clear and accessible enough.

The 6-disc multi-change stereo was appalling! It could just have been a flawed unit, but I replaced it very quickly with an MP3 unit.

The climate-control, more-or-less a thermostat controlling the heater/air-con, appears rather poor at keeping a constant environment, often producing a cold blast of air just when you were starting to get cosy on a cold morning's commute.

I feel like I'm really niggling to mention the minor flaws, but that's all they are. Minor. This has been a really good buy in my opinion, especially to think that running costs are so much lower; rather than spending 40GBP a week on fuel, I'm now spending 35GBP every 10-11 days.

Overall, I feel this car has been great value, doing pretty much everything I wanted from it. There are few cars that matched it for the combination of reasonable capital cost, running costs and performance - I've no doubt it isn't easy to bring those three features together in the way the Focus has, but I'm grateful to the designers for knocking this one together.