2008 Ford Focus

The enthusiast media has posed the question: "Why doesn't Ford give us the smash-hit, European-spec Focus?" That car is based on the company's C1 chassis architecture, which also underpins the excellent Mazda3. Ford asked itself the same thing about two years ago and made the business decision to go with a less-costly, potentially more profitable Focus for North America by giving the current car a substantial redo instead.

Just about everything you can see or touch is new. Ford has pared the lineup to two body styles: a four-door and a two-door with a trunk, the latter replacing the previous three-door hatchback. The wagon and five-door hatch are gone. All sheetmetal is new, save for the four-door's roof panel. The new styling is different from the old: clean in profile, if a bit gimmicky in a few places. Powertrains carry over in the form of the 2.0-liter, 140-horsepower four and a P-ZEV version that cranks out 132. The safety quotient is up-with no price increase-including standard front, side, and side-curtain airbags plus a tire-pressure-monitoring system.

Ford put a lot of effort into reducing NVH, and this shows. Road rumble is down considerably, and the car rides with suppleness it lacked before. Steering feel and response have improved too. A new acoustic glass windshield reduces engine and wind noise. The trunk is larger than a Civic's or Corolla's. The Focus has given up its enthusiast notions, but is fun to drive for a price-point machine.

Its biggest news is Sync, a connectivity system developed in concert with Microsoft. You can connect nearly any phone, iPod, MP3 player, or other device via Sync's MP3 jack, USB port, or BlueTooth and operate it hands-free. It takes a few minutes to learn the system's commands, but once you've got it down, Sync makes using your electronic toys easy and safe. It'll appear on 12 Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln products this year (standard on some, and a just-$395 option on the rest).

And that's the biggest news in the new Focus. The reconstituted Focus forges no new ground and isn't the match of the class-leading Civic in any way.