This is not the cheapest Focus hatchback you can buy, but with a list price of £17,945 it's one of the very few costing under £18,000. There's an almost identical model costing £450 less, but that has a CO2 rating of 105g/km, while this one comes below the three-figure threshold with 99g/km.
For private buyers thinking only in terms of Vehicle Excise Duty, the cheaper model is the one to go for. It costs just £20 per year to tax, and while the 99g/km version doesn't cost anything you would have to hold on to it for nearly thirty years before you got the money back that way, and that's very unlikely to happen.
For business users, it's a slightly different story, as the 99g/km car is rated two percent points lower for Benefit In Kind taxation. You would, however, have to be on a very low rung of the corporate ladder to be offered this model, as it's in the Style specification and therefore about as basic as any Focus gets.
The level of equipment is hardly stingy. You get air-conditioning, electrically operated door mirrors, front floor mats (a surprisingly expensive option on several premium cars), tyre pressure monitoring, Hill Start Assist, DAB digital radio, Bluetooth connectivity and voice control.
Also, if you set up your smartphone to make it possible, Ford's Emergency Assist system is also included. On the other hand, you have to make do without front foglights, a heated windscreen and the impressive touchscreen graphics introduced when the facelifted Focus broke cover a year ago. All of these features are available on the Zetec model one step up.
The measures taken to reduce the CO2 emissions by 6g/km have also resulted in a 4.3mpg improvement in combined fuel economy to 65.7mpg. This figure which puts this petrol-fuelled car into the same territory as the more powerful diesels in the range.
Actually achieving 65.7mpg is another matter. On this test I averaged slightly under 50mpg, and while I could certainly have done better I'd have been hard pressed to beat 60mpg.
There's also no guarantee that you'll get better economy than the chap along the road with his 105g/km car. Different driving styles could easily close or even eradicate the official 4.3mpg difference.
The sound effects can lead you to drive less economically than you need to. The 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine is splendid and thoroughly deserving of the various awards it has received. While it's not as quiet as Vauxhall's similar unit it is undoubtedly very refined.
At low revs, though, it can sound like it's labouring when it actually isn't. At times, there's a strong temptation to shift down a gear long before the little light on the instrument display comes on to tell you this would be a good plan.
Maximum power is 98bhp, which isn't much to push a car weighing nearly 1,300kg, so you're going to have to work its socks off if you want to get anywhere in a hurry, especially uphill. If you're rarely in a hurry, there's little reason why you should buy anything more powerful.
Style models run on 16-inch wheels (with rather attractive plastic covers) and their tyres have sensibly, if unfashionably, tall sidewalls. This should be a recipe for good ride quality, and in many situations the Focus is indeed quite comfortable, but it could be a lot better.
A slightly firmer suspension set-up would quell the slight tendency to wallow over medium-sized bumps, and I hope Ford is working on this now.