THE last couple of revisions of the ever-popular Ford Focus have been just that – subtle and keeping the car up-to-date.

But this is a proper new car, not least visually.

The exterior has moved on considerably, to the point where it now looks almost futuristic. I like it.

Inside, things, on first look, don’t appear to have changed quite as much. But, when you’ve been inside for a little while, you notice that the Focus now has an infotainment system to compete with the best – an eight-inch touchscreen that brings navigation, entertainment, climate control and so on all together.

The switchgear is updated, the materials feel a bit more premium and in line with the competition.

The cabin feels more refined and more up-to-date than ever and the new Focus comes with a long list of tech options.

The Focus was one of the first mainstream cars to parallel-park itself and its Active Park Assist can now handle perpendicular parking as well.

There’s also traffic sign recognition, adaptive cruise control, pre-collision alert, active city stop, cross traffic alert, lane alert and a blind spot system to boot. That’s a serious amount of safety equipment.

The test cars that I drove had the established 1.0 Ecoboost with 125ps. It’s still lively enough considering its size, and returns a saintly 108g/km and 60mpg, but it’ll be interesting to see how much better the more powerful – 150ps or 182ps – 1.5-litre version fares.

Also available is an all-new 1.5-litre diesel, with 98g/km and 74mpg, while a 185ps, 2.0-litre, diesel is also new, with reduced emissions over its predecessor.

The new Focus has regained the cutting edge that the last version seemed to lose a little of.

It’s refined, packed with tech, economical and manages to be a do-all family car that is also a pleasure to drive.

Prices start from £13,995 for the base Studio, which has better spec than you might expect, up to a really rather reasonable £21,795 for the top-spec Titanium X, before engine choices and options.

The sporty ST, which really ought to be very good indeed on this evidence, is between £22,195 and £25,995.