Here’s a hatch that likes to stick to its knitting as a passenger car– even if it has pinched a few SUV design elements.

Price: $37,990
Powertrain and performance: 1.5-litre three cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, 134kW at 6000rpm, 240Nm at 1750-5000rpm. Eight-speed automatic transmission. Front-wheel drive. 6.4L/100km, 148g/km CO2.
Vital statistics: Length 4398mm, height 1502mm, width 1979mm, wheelbase 2700mm. Luggage 443 litres. Wheels: 17-inch alloys with 215/55R17 tyres.
We Like: Sparkling performance, particularly in Sport mode. Nice ride and handling. Higher ride height for ease of entry and exit. Excellent safety specification. Give the bird to SUV pretenders.
We don’t like: Automatic gets a little confused at times. Vehicle competes in a shrinking market.

ONE of the more under-reported events of New Zealand’s 2020 motoring year has been a substantial reduction in the choice of a long-serving nameplate – the Ford Focus.

We first saw that name close to 22 years ago when the first-generation model was launched here to replace the Mazda 323-derived Laser. Since then, the Focus has regularly been a solid competitor in the small car segment against the likes of Toyota Corolla and Mazda3.

But times change, and the advent of the small SUV is having a massive effect on the ongoing viability of small front-driven hatchbacks and sedans. Year to date to the end of August this year, what are known as compact SUVs have commanded 18 percent of our new vehicle market – while small passenger cars have reduced their share to a measly six percent.

So what to do? Ford New Zealand’s response has been to make some members of the Focus lineup redundant. The entry Trend hatch and Trend wagon have gone, and the Titanium level of specification has disappeared.

Instead, there are now just three members of a Focus lineup that Ford New Zealand has dubbed the 2020.75 selection. And interestingly, they’ve all moved away from being standard hatchbacks – instead, the focus (ahem) is on them being a bit special in different ways.

At the top there’s the Focus ST, a 206kW 2.3-litre turbocharged hot hatch that has entered the Kiwi market at $59,990. Then there’s the ST-Line X, which at $42,990 essentially replaces the Titanium but which has a greater driver focus (ahem again) via such things as lowered sports suspension, and sporty interior detailing.

And the entry model is now the $37,990 Focus Active, a hatch which gives the bird to those darned SUVs by pinching various design elements off them, such as increased ground clearance and extended wheel arches with protective cladding, and still claims to be a hatch.

I love it. As a motoring journalist I’m always banging on about how silly it is for some small vehicles to be described as SUVs when they clearly aren’t. They might have jacked-up ride heights, but they’re also front-wheel drive and with hatchback body shapes – and to my eyes that makes them small passenger cars, not sports utility vehicles.

But with the Focus Active, Ford doesn’t suite describe it as an SUV. Closest the brand goes is to describe the vehicle as having an SUV-inspired design. And that’s great, because it leaves the real Ford SUVs, such as the upcoming Escape and the smaller Puma, to market themselves as SUVs.

I’ve just spent a week behind the wheel of a Focus Active, and it’s a great compact car. It’s jacked-up ride height – 30mm at the front and 35mm at the rear – means it is easier to get in and out of than a traditional small hatchback, but in just about every other respect it operates like any hatchback should.

Just about. The latest Focus range has a selectable drive mode system that normally offers Normal, Sport and Eco. But in the Active, this has been extended so the system also offers a Slippery mode for low-traction conditions, and a Trail mode for soft surfaces. So that’s another difference that underlines the ‘active’ intent of the Focus Active.

But it still doesn’t make it an SUV.

Powering the Focus Active is a 1.5-litre turbocharged three cylinder EcoBoost engine that develops 134kW of power and 240Nm of torque. The engine is mated to an eight-speed automatic that is operated by using a rotary gearshift dial, which was something that I simply couldn’t get used to.

The dial is simple enough to operate – you turn the dial to select Park, Reverse, Neutral or Drive – and there’s a central button to push if you wish to operate the transmission manually using paddles on the steering wheel. But I discovered that I must spend a lot of my driving time with my left hand resting on a gearshift lever, because the lack of one in the Focus felt a bit strange.

It’s a very good engine and transmission combination though. I was fascinated to learn that the little triple engine has cylinder deactivation technology that automatically shuts down one cylinder at times when torque demand is low, such as cruising along a motorway.

Sometimes it feel as if the transmission got a little confused when the Focus was operating in the Normal drive mode. I felt things were much better in Sport, with the auto able to extract quite sparkling performance from what remains a small capacity engine.

A major selling point of the Focus Active when it was first released here was that it has independent rear suspension, whereas the likes of the Focus Trend had a torsion beam setup. But with the 2020.75 rationalisation, all three Focus models now have the IRS.

The Active’s multi-link setup remains a little different however, because the suspension is high-riding to give that little extra ground clearance. But don’t think that translates to any lessening of ride and handling ability, because this vehicle drives really well, helped along by the stability of 17-inch wheels.

The Active theme is carried through into the interior, with all seats featuring an ‘A’ on the seat backs. It also has rear privacy glass, an eight-inch colour touch screen, Ford’s Sync-3 in-vehicle communications system which includes Apple CarPlay/Android Auto smartphone compatibility, wireless smartphone charging, and satellite navigation.

The vehicle also now has the FordPass Connect embedded modem which features an array of remote vehicle functionality and connected services such as remote vehicle lock and unlock.

Perhaps if there is one downside to the Focus Active’s claim to offering the benefits of being a crossover vehicle without calling itself an SUV, is that it doesn’t look like an SUV – and given New Zealand’s current fixation with that vehicle type, it might be a disadvantage.

I hope not, because the Active really does appeal as a vehicle that spans the boundary between a small hatchback and a small SUV. Best of both worlds, you could say.