The Good bits:

The car is very comfortable, particularly in long journeys. The sits are supportive, lumbar support for the driver is brilliant, and everything is easy to use and readily available.

The rear sits are completely removable, brilliant when loads of cargo space is required, such as ferrying garden waste or trips to Ikea.

Plenty of headroom at the front and at the back

It seems to handle quite well.

Fantastic fuel economy, 55mpg on the motorway is very much achievable

The Bad bits:

The 1.6 TDCi engine gives very good economy, but is otherwise horrendous. It is a 110ps engine, but the turbo doesn't kick in until 1800rpm or so. Anything below that, and the engine is completely gutless, so much so that this is the first diesel engine I have repeatedly stalled until I got used to revving it up like a petrol. Due to it being a diesel lump, it doesn't rev as quickly as a petrol, so on hill starts it can be tricky. You need 1800rpm+ to have any power to start in the hill, but it takes a good second+ to get there. Now, you need to take the foot off the brake, almost floor the accelerator, and very very carefully balance the clutch so avoid stalling and avoid rolling backwards. In previous diesels, the engine had enough torque at idle so that just carefully playing with the clutch would stop you from rolling back. Not this one

Also, I didn't know at the time that the engine is actually a PSA (Peugeot/Citroen) unit, otherwise I would have avoided it like the plague. To each his own right?

The build quality of this car is quite simply r******. Materials are somewhat average, not horrible but certainly not premium, but the car is put together with bits of plastic that just hook one another, and wood-style screws without nuts, that just screw directly onto plastic. That's simply not what I was looking for in a car. Case in point, the bonnet latch has a design flaw (as I've been told by Ford mechanic at dealer), meaning that in the two years I've had the car, it's been in to be fixed twice, at a cost of around £200 so far. Seems to last about a year before it brakes again.

The aircon misteriously lost all its gas once. Since refilled and all good. However, the car aircon engineer that came to do the work told me that the pipes for the aircon gas run very close to one of the side panels in this car (Ford Focus in general), and that over time, with vibrations, they tend to break and leak all gas out, needing replacement. Yet another design flaw!

The Dealers

I can only speak for two London Ford dealers. But absolutely r******. Ford are very popular in the UK, and they know it, so they make no effort to please their customers. I've had to argue several items in receipts after services for work that was definitely not required. They even tried to charge me an hours work rate for replacing a fuse! Will be looking for a third dealer next time, but since these were prime nationwide dealers, I was most unimpressed.

Would I buy again?

Not in a million years. Not a Ford Focus, or any other Ford. There are far better cars for less money out there these days.