A smooth, six-speed gearchange helps, and then there's the way it flows through every bend with big grip and perfect poise, a jittering over ripply road surfaces its only failing. Jost Capito, the director of Team RS, says the ST is designed to handle well and stay controllable without an ESP stability system, which is why ESP is not standard. Fiat's Stilo Abarth is the only five-cylinder rival.So the Focus is as effortlessly fast as its Astra VXR rival is manically so. And the engine responds crisply for a turbo unit, with instant effect and hardly any of that "elastic" feeling such engines sometimes have.

Not like it feels in Volvo's T5 cars.The vocal repertoire is similarly broad, culminating in a hard-edged, staccato beat at the 7,000rpm limit. The sonority is helped by a "sound symposer", a resonant tube with a vibrating diaphragm that is aimed at the underbonnet bulkhead so the ST's occupants can gain maximum aural benefit The sound is novel for a compact hatchback. No need to change down, stay in fourth gear and feel the turbocharged torque haul the Focus in one lunge right through the engine's speed repertoire. That motif is repeated at the back, where the bumper has grown cartoon whoosh-lines where it flows into the wheel arch. Inside, huggy Recaro seats can have the bolsters trimmed to match the paintwork, the steering wheel has a thicker rim, the pedals are of rubber-studded aluminium, and a three-dial pack on the dashboard displays the engine oil's pressure and temperature and the amount of turbocharger boost.

The headlining is black - very Golf GTI.But raw ingredients don't always cook to perfection. The ST also has a fuzzy identity as a car deliberately not too extreme.That said, this ST is less of a shrinking violet than the last one, even if it is a long way from the raw tactility and untamed demeanour of 2002's last- generation Focus RS. So it's with no clear expectations that I slip into the new ST and fire up its five-cylinder engine It sounds good: deep and crisp and potently uneven. The driving position can be rendered perfect with separate seat adjustments for height and tilt (the optional leather chairs let you adjust cushion length), and the aluminium-ringed dials quantify performance parameters.But I'm just 400 yards down the road and the ST's personality is revealing itself.