It's the David Beckham of cars – absolutely dashing outside, but underneath its glamorous skin it’s completely safe, sensible and sober. It may even underwhelm you at first.

Take off and acceleration is perfectly fine. But if you’re looking for gadgets try Tokyo, and if you want a sporty interior that looks like it was designed by Gaultier, then you’ll be disappointed.

What we have here is a car for the ages.

A car for a buyer with a revised budget, who once wanted all mod cons but is now happy to drive a great car without the bells and whistles that do everything, but yet nothing.

The days of scraping together the price of a super-car that can make you a toasted sandwich while giving you a massage all the way home, are gone.

Cars that can predict your humour and adjust the temperature and lighting accordingly have been put on hold, while so-called hybrids that actually save the rain forest have been decommissioned for now.

Yes the Credit Crunch-cum-Recession has re-evaluated absolutely everything we ever thought about motoring.

What we want is a car that will get us through the next few years and come out the other side shining, and let’s not forget that that’s what cars are for – to get us from A to B with as minimum fuss as is possible.

And if you can throw in a bit of style, then all the better.

So step forward the Ford Focus, a modern day dream machine.

As safe, solid and reliable a medium sized car as you are ever going to get.

And I don’t mean to play it down with all this talk of sobriety – sober is now absolutely fine these days.

Anyway there’s the Focus FR, the fastest diesel on the planet if you want rock n’ roll, but more about that next month.

Since it first came out, the Focus has captured the imagination of the average car buyer across the world and has become one of the most successful models of all time.

And the latest tweaks on the second generation continue that rich and deeply absorbing tradition.

While take off is reserved it is not sticky, handling is absolutely superb, and fuel efficiency is extremely economical.

And news hot of the presses for Focus fans, is that my spies tell me that Ford have pencilled in next year to launch the third generation Focus.

It is sleeker and sexier than ever and is set to propel this great badge to even bigger and greater success. It will be launched around the same time as the new Ford C Max and will mark some much-needed highlights for the year ahead.

And in what’s certain to inject massive dollops of life to the car, the next generation will contain some of the most state of the art gadgetry to be featured in family driving.

We are a promised a whole host of mod cons that will inject some much-needed life into the sober dash.

Anyway, enough talk of abstinence … it’s time to raise a glass and celebrate the Ford Focus.

- Ian Mallon