It’s a rewarding car to live with and a brilliant all-rounder

Here’s the plan. Essentially, we’re going to act out the scenario mooted by Henry Catchpole in the final few sentences of his Driven report on the Mountune performance-pack-equipped Focus ST back in evo 124.

On the face of it, it’s a classic tale of lust and compromise. Let’s suppose you’ve got a new Focus ST but fancy an even newer Focus RS (the car Ford reckons will put a cork in the gob of any Mégane R26.R driver that comes within bragging distance). Given the gradual ramp-up of publicity and drip-fed spec details for the second coming of the fastest Focus with the iconic badge, who wouldn’t? But, despite the pangs of desire, you don’t want to chop in the ST just yet, which is equally understandable.

Even in a relatively modest state of tune (222bhp and 236lb ft of torque) the ST’s sonorously warbling Volvo-sourced 2.5-litre five-pot turbo is arguably the most charismatic engine in any hot hatch and, on typical give-and-take roads, makes the ST feel significantly quicker than the outputs and the 6.8sec 0-62mph time would suggest. And its effortless, torque-rich delivery meshes beautifully with the slightly laid-back personality of the car, which has been balanced to provide almost executive-saloon levels of comfort and refinement without significantly blunting sporting verve and edge. Apart from the appalling fuel consumption, the ST’s Achilles heel from the start, it’s an easy, rewarding car to live with and a brilliant all-rounder.

But it’s not an RS, which, as well as looking harder-knuckled (RevoKnuckled even), has the stats to back it up: 300bhp, 324lb ft, 0-62mph in 5.9sec, 163mph. So here’s what you do. Pay Mountune £1120 and buy enough extra power and torque – especially torque, which leaps to an almost RS-matching 295lb ft at 2500rpm – to keep yourself entertained and the ST’s warranty valid until the day of the RS dawns.

If it ever does. Naturally, there’ll be clear blue water between the standard ST and RS in outright, point-to-point, ability, but what if the Mountune ST were to turn out to be a yet more beguiling proposition, providing barely inferior straight-line pace to the RS (the claimed 0-62mph time for the Mountuned ST is identical to that for the muscle-suited super-Focus) but with the easier-going, easier-to-live-with demeanour of the ST: stealthy, useable, likely to be underestimated. Deliciously so.

Could it be that when our shiny new ST gets its Mountune upgrade shortly after I finish this report, it will upstage the RS through the sheer force of its slow-burning, unshowy likeability? Maybe not the convenient stopgap after all. As for the white stripes, I don’t like the band either.