IN THIS FEATURE Filling the hole The best of both worlds Come on, feel the noise Fun through the bends Plenty of kit to boot Back from its sabbatical

Ever since the last Focus RS torque-steered its way off the production line nearly two years ago, there has been a gaping hot-hatch shaped hole in the Blue Oval's line-up. Sure, the Mondeo and Fiesta STs are great at what they do, but Ford really needs a car to epitomise what a hot hatch should be in the 21st Century.

Wearing lurid orange paint as its signature colour, the Focus ST certainly isn't a run-of-the-mill family hatch. Chunky 18-inch alloys, gaping air intakes, twin exhausts, a substantial real spoiler and countless flashes of aluminium leave you with no doubt about where the Focus ST is coming from.

ST sits a total of 25mm lower than regular Focus

But a wild paint job and big alloys does not a hot hatch make: it must have the bark to match its visual bite.

In the Focus ST, that bark comes from a turbocharged 2.5-litre five-cylinder Volvo engine, tuned by Ford's TeamRS to a substantial 221bhp. A five-cylinder engine may not be de rigueur for a hot hatch - most others on the market use turbocharged fours - but Ford has decided to go its own way.