FOCUS ON THE GOOD

Familiarity and reliability is no bad thing, says Julie Marshall

The is, and always has been, a really lovely car to drive. The handling and steering are spot on and it will happily carry you about all day without either you or it complaining of fatigue.

There have been many versions over the years and this, one of the latest we’ve driven, is the St-line 118bhp 1.5-litre diesel with a six-speed man- ual transmission that claims a 62.8mpg on the new WLTP scale

Now, as we expected, we didn’t get anywhere near that, but the 47mpg we did achieve was a touch disappointing even though it was over a week of mostly urban routes. Despite the poor results, it’s still the engine most suitable for high mileage drivers who should improve on our figures over longer journeys.

It’s one of three diesels available and joins a 1.5-litre with 94bhp and a two-litre with 148bhp. There’s even more choice in the petrol powertrains. The excellent one-litre petrol Ecoboost comes in three outputs: 84bhp, 98bhp and 123bhp. Then there’s a 1.5 Ecoboost with 148bhp or 180bhp.

Depending on mood, driving style and conditions there’s a choice between Normal, Eco and Sport’s set up via a button on the console

These are supposed to affect steering weight, traction and throttle response, but we found very little difference so left it in Normal for the majority of the time.

interiors have never been particularly cutting edge but they are robust and have a touch of quality about them. There’s just the right amount of touchscreen control versus old school switches and knobs.

Trim levels are named as before. Entry level Style models get Bluetooth, air conditioning and DAB radio, next up is Zetec which adds cruise control, Apple Carplay and Android Auto. Titanium has sat nav, parking sensors and climate control, Titanium X gets electric driver’s seat, tinted glass and 17-inch alloys.

In St-line guise, thestiff er and the ride height 10mm lower which makes for an even more rewarding drive. It’s also ‘blinged up’ with St-line body styling kit, badges, 17inch Rock Metallic alloys, polished twin tailpipe and a large body-coloured rear spoiler.

Added to our test car was the driver assistance pack at £500 and the £750 convenience pack.

The assistance pack includes a raft of electronic driver aids including adaptive cruise control which uses radar to keep you from running into the car in front, can recognise road signs and even nudge you back into place if you wander over the white lines.

A rear-view camera is included in the convenience pack as are ford’ s devilishly simple and effective pop-out door protectors. They cost £100 if you buy them as a standalone extra and are worth every penny if you value your paintwork.

Another £100 was for the wireless charging – which I couldn’t use as my phone is old hat – and a very welcome £150-worth of heated steering wheel as well as the 10-speaker B& op lay audio system at £500.

The list price of the model on test is £22,850 but the host of extras fitted to it (£3,075-worth) bumped that up to £25,925.