This being my first column of 2005, I suppose it would be traditional and easy to start off this morning by wishing you all a very happy new year. But I fear that here, in the motoring outpost of an increasingly sanitised world, it won’t be happy at all. In fact, you’ll probably lose your driving licence.

A recent report has found that with 4,600 speed cameras nestling in every bush and behind every bridge parapet, even the most careful of drivers must now expect to be banned from driving up to three times in their motoring career. It is a statistical fact.

There’s talk, too, that drivers who have an accident in which someone dies should be charged as a matter of course with manslaughter. Which means, if you think about it, that there can be no such thing as “an accident”.

This is true, of course. Thanks to the example set by the infernal and increasingly powerful Health and Safety Executive, staff at BBC Radio Sheffield have been given booklets on how to boil a kettle — “under no circumstances empty the contents over your head” — and more recently at the BBC in Birmingham how to use a revolving door. They’ve even provided diagrams.

Then you have RoSPA, which stands for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Something which, by its very nature, cannot be foreseen. This doesn’t put them off, though. Crikey, no. And of course, if they find peril in a revolving door, imagine how many dangers they can uncover on the roads. Best really if you don’t drive at all.

Especially if you’ve had a wine gum recently. Every so often someone suggests the amount of alcohol permitted in a driver’s blood should be zero. In the same way that people used to suggest that hunting with hounds was cruel and that smoking should be banned in pubs. Those on a mission are always going to beat those who aren’t really bothered either way.

That’s why we have 20mph zones in towns and 40mph limits on motorways. It’s why we’re not allowed to use mobile phones at the wheel any more and why petrol is now more expensive than myrrh. It’s why all the traffic lights are set on red for two weeks and green for a thousandth of a second, and why the roads are a multicoloured blaze of lanes for anything that isn’t a car. It’s why you can’t find a parking space. It’s why you’re ticketed when you move, and ticketed when you stop. It’s why you pay the congestion charge in London and why you have to let the bus go first.

It’s why the council in Kingston upon Thames wants pedestrians to be able, and I’m quoting now, to walk down the middle of the road without being told to “get out of the way” by motorists.

The pressure I face from the anti-car lobby is both fierce and relentless. I was recently filmed driving a £1,500 Porsche from London to Brighton, which you might think was pretty harmless. But no. According to some halfwit MP whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, I killed the planet in the process.

It was the same story when I drove a Land Rover Discovery up a mountain in Scotland, and when I raced a Ferrari 612 against a plane to Switzerland. Every single time I get in a car on television there is some pressure group out there, or some MP, or some Hoxton busybody, waiting to brand me irresponsible.

The message is clear. I’m promoting something that, while no one was looking, became as unacceptable as using the n word. Among the Guardian classes — and they’re the ones with the real power these days — motorists must be pilloried, abused and reminded of their misdeeds at every opportunity. Even the weather forecast now has an air quality index, designed solely to make Beemer Man feel a pang of guilt.

And every single survey that is critical of the car, no matter how harebrained or blatantly one-sided, receives blanket news coverage with lots of shots of cars belching out . . . well not much actually. But this doesn’t bother the Guardianistas.

What really gets up my nose, though, is the car industry. It’s huge. Even in this country, where few actual cars are made, it still employs directly or indirectly one in 10 of the adult population. Around the world the number of people who depend on it and the product it makes runs into the hundreds of millions. In terms of financial clout, too, it’s massive. At least as big, I’m told, as the Colombian drug cartels, and they run private armies.

So where’s the fightback from this leviathan? Where are the chest-beating good news stories? Where’s the oomph? Why is Bill Ford not stripped to the waist on live TV in a bare-knuckle fist fight with George Monbiot? The motor industry is the lion, the king of the financial jungle. So I’d like to see it roar from time to time. Rather than introducing the new Ford Focus with its increased levels of safety and quieter bloody tyres.

The first Focus was a revelation. It was far from the best-looking hatchback on the road and far from being the best packaged or the fastest. What made it a phenomenal global success was, strangely, its independent rear suspension, an expensive option for Ford that paid off in spades. Because it made the Focus an absolute dream to drive.

It was so good, in fact, that I bought one — a simple, normal, 1.6 five-door. It’s our station car, our tool. It’s what we leave in unlit railway car parks for a week and give to the nanny when she’s going clubbing. And after four years I can tell you two things. I still find it enormous fun to drive. And it has never gone wrong.

This means it hits both important bull’s eyes and that endows it with an aura of greatness.

So what about the replacement, then? The new Focus? Well obviously it didn’t go wrong either, but then the car I drove was a meticulously prepared press demonstrator and I only had it for a week. So as far as long-term reliability goes I don’t know.

What I do know is that the design flair that set the original out from the crowd is gone. It looks like an early Nineties Vauxhall Astra from the outside, and, er, a car from the inside. There’s nothing at all to raise your pulse rate even a little bit.

Worse than this, though, is the driving experience. Sadly, my test car was a diesel, which tends to sit in the recipe like a giant anchovy, overpowering the delicate flavours of everything else. It left me cold. It’s not bad, but for fun I prefer the old one.

So far as price and equipment levels are concerned, it’s right where you’d expect it to be, cheaper than the rivals from Germany, more expensive than the rivals from France, and running neck and neck with its big enemy, the Vauxhall Astra.

I get the sense with this car that Ford devoted its entire engineering resource to the issues of safety, economy and the environment. Which is a bit like the lion pandering to the antelope. It’s all jolly worthy, but for over £15,000 I want a little bit more besides.

I suppose, all things considered, the Focus is still, just, the hatchback to buy, but do you know what I’d do? If I were in the market for a straightforward car I’d buy the old one. At £12,000 it was the best of the bunch, and now that good ones with low mileages are kicking around in the second-hand columns for £6,000 they’re even more unbeatable.

Of course, I’m not in the market for a straightforward car. What I am in the market for, still, is a GT. Several months have elapsed since I ordered this car, and several weeks since I paid the deposit. American customers have been attended to, but sadly those of us in Europe must wait while the car is Blairified with quieter exhausts and so on.

Each time I ring to ask when it’s coming, the delivery date is pushed back another month. So now I’ve given up calling.

Instead I sit around watching the dollar crash and wondering why the price has gone up. It started out at “less than £100,000” and is now past the £120,000 mark, plus another £4,000 if you want stripes and fancy wheels.

And to make matters worse, the car that hasn’t even been built yet is now the subject of a recall for some suspension component. Still, I do expect to take delivery of this 212mph monster at some point in 2005 and that will make it a very happy new year for me at least. See you in the dock.

Vital statistics

Model Ford Focus Titanium five-door
Engine type 2 litre, 1997cc, turbo diesel
Power 136bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque 251 lb ft @ 2000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive
Fuel/CO2 51.4mpg (combined) / 145g/km
Tyres 205/55 R16
Acceleration 0-60mph: 9.3sec
Top speed 126mph
Insurance Group 10
Price £17,375
Verdict A bland sequel
Rating 3/5

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