A heavily revised Ford Focus will be the key car on the Ford stand at Geneva Motor Show next week, writes Brian Byrne.
I got a preview of it at a special reveal in Frankfurt last Wednesday, and these exclusive pictures show the new front end which has been brought into line with that on the Fiesta and the upcoming new Mondeo. The cars shown were the 5-door hatchback and the estate.
Both the Focus and Mondeo won't arrive in Ireland until late autumn.
The external changes include completely new lights front and rear, as well as detail changes to the character line work. Overall the car looks wider from both front and rear, and the whole effect is modern and clean, in my view a significant improvement on the somewhat fussy style details in the outgoing car.
The interior has been substantially improved too, with a new centre stack that can in some grades include an 8-inch touchscreen which underpins the latest version of the brand's connectivity system, SYNC II. In general, new switchgear has also been designed to make operation more intuitive. The overall effect is of a more upmarket car than before.
Most significant of all, there is a whole new range of powertrains, including a 1.5 EcoBoost petrol unit available in 150/180hp variants, and a new 1.5 TDCI diesel with 95/105/120hp versions. The 1.0 EcoBoost will remain in the engines lineup with 100/125hp versions. Ford says its engineers have also revised the suspension, to provide sharper handling.
With more than 12m units of the Focus nameplate sold since it was first launched in 1998, some 7m of those in Europe, this latest revision is likely to go a long way to maintaining the model's current momentum as the best selling car in the world.
