and sure enough he checked for oil and it was bone dry.

would any of the backroomers like to hazzard a guess as to what went wrong and why?

It ran out of oil.

Because it had not be checked and topped up.

Assuming that model doesn't have a history of excessive use of oil, most people should not need to continually top up with oil at the rate the OP had to. To me, this sounds like some other issue that caused the problem.

Out walking my usual 5 miles this afternoon and remembered about an incident we had with the 1.8 petrol Focus in about 2001 or 2002.

2 days after having the car serviced me and the Mrs were off to work and as I pulled of the drive she ran after me so I stopped. There was a pool of oil on the drive. Parked it on the road, Mrs went to work, I called the RAC.

Once he had removed the under engine shield (which had quite a bit of oil in it) he checked the sump plug which was fine and then the oil filter which was not. The rubber O ring was sticking out the side and not doing its job. He took off the filter and said he needed to get a new one as the rubber O ring could not be trusted again. Went to local factors or wherever and when he got back showed me the difference between the genuine Ford filter fitted at the main dealer and the aftermarket filter he had just bought. On the aftermarket filter the O ring fitted between 2 raised metal pressings and could go nowhere, on the Ford filter it just sat on the surface. The RAC said that he had never seen a filter like that and wrote me a note to take to the Ford garage suggesting it was faulty. After he had fitted the new filter he checked the oil and it took about 1/2 a litre to the full and he said it would be fine especially since I had only pulled off the drive and seen no warning lights (engine was still fine 6 or 7 years later when I sold it).

Went to Ford who looked at it and went into the stores for another filter which was exactly the same. Said it was perfectly normal. Gave up at that point. But on my way home I drove passed Halfords and checked their filter for the Focus, exactly the same as the one bought by the RAC man with upstands to hold the O ring. Wrote to the garage about it but within a couple of weeks they had been taken over by a national Ford chain and closed the local branch. With no damage done and my only losses being the cost of a filter, 1/2 a litre of oil and some Gunk to clean the drive there was no point pursuing it.

After that the car was always serviced by a local Ford Indy (who actually worked for the Ford dealer that closed) but he only used Mahle filters (wonder why).

Could the OP's oil filter have a similar issue? Different brands and 20 years or so apart thus unlikely.

Maybe the same reason that one of the contributors on here recommended that the one replacement part I should always get for my Corolla Verso from the Main dealer is the oil filter.

Makes sense as this is such an crucial component and seeing the pattern parts selling so cheaply it makes you wonder about the quality of some of them.

You misunderstand, read my post again.

It was the genuine Ford filter that caused the issue, the RAC man spotted it immediately. The filter he fitted was fine and the local Ford indy only used Mahle filters which were fine.

So it looks like the oil filter was a red herring.

The engine was dry of oil because it had been holed when the big end went so kind of the opposite to what a previous poster assumed i.e it lost all the oil because it went 'bang!' it didn't go bang because the oil hadn't been checked and he was running about low on oil. There was no oil warning light and the oil level had recently been checked. It looks like the cars behind were flashing because oil had started pouring out from under the car just as he was pulling over.

As to why the big end went on what is generally considered to be a reliable engine, well that's another matter. Our local garage quite reasonably suggested that we'll never know for sure short of taking the engine apart and examining the various components and even then...

So, as always thanks for the replies and I'll keep you posted on the hunt for a reliable sub £1500 car just a few days before Christmas...should be fun!