One last showdown: Ford Focus ST vs Honda Civic Type R

One last dance in these seminal hot hatchbacks…

We take these manual, front-drive hot hatches for one final fling in Wales

It’s probably unwise for a lowly road tester to even attempt a Churchillian tone. Thankfully, I’m only paraphrasing. Have we reached the end for the conventional, established, petrol-swilling hot hatchback?
Or just the beginning of the end? Or might this perhaps be only the end of the beginning? Erm, yes. And also no. Sorry, Winnie. Your own feelings about this will depend, I suspect, on your sentiments about electric hot hatchbacks like the Alpine A290, Abarth 500e and Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. Nevertheless, here we are – wherever that is.
“At an undoubtedly significant and pretty moribund-feeling, yet still indeterminate, point somewhere along the line, from which we can’t be absolutely certain what will happen next in the 50-year-old saga of the predominantly front-drive performance hatchback.” Poetic, eh? So much, we do know.
The bodies are mounting up – and