That’s no longer the case, and I would hesitate to say that of its contemporaries (think VW GTI or Honda Civic Si), the ’15 ST is the most aggressively styled of the group. Now, whether you like that or not depends if you like the sleeper or Q-car aspect of your chosen ride; if that’s the case, save yourself some money and forego the special wheels and stripes. Nothing you can do about the hood, though. That’s standard.

Of course, it would be one thing if the ST conversion just added some fancy colours and wheels, but a look inside suggests that there’s a whole lot more going on, here.

The charcoal coloured Recaro seats, for instance, are standard fare and my word, do they ever look the business. If you told me we’d be seeing racing seats like this in a Focus when the latest-gen debuted in 2010, I would have thought you’d spent just a little too much time with the Fast and Furious franchise. Now that the Focus’s little Fiesta brother has an ST version of its own, a fast version of the Focus seems like simple maths.

The seating position provided by the Recaros, meanwhile, is a good one; just upright enough without cramming you up against the wheel WRC-style, and with supportive side bolstering. Actually, the side bolstering is quite robust, meaning some may have a harder time clambering out over the sides. That’s the price of performance, I guess.

Other new interior bits include an easier-to-use climate system with bigger buttons (a dual-zone system, as seen here, comes as part of a $1,250 options package), re-aligned cupholders that are easier to reach, and door lock controls moved from the centre stack to the doors, which makes a whole lot more sense.

As far as infotainment goes, our tester had the 8.4-inch MyFord touchscreen option, but you do have to pay $800 to have said screen display a navi system. Your $1,250 also gets you 10-speaker premium audio, and while sound quality is good enough, the way the subwoofer intrudes into the rear hatch (and looks cheap to boot), is less impressive.

Unfortunately, a new ST doesn’t mean a new infotainment system; you’re still stuck with MyFord Touch and its small buttons, unresponsive screen and dull colours. Yes, its quadrant interface is intuitive, but it’s just so durn slow. We’ll have to wait until later this year before we see the newest version of this tech in any Ford, when it debuts in the Blue Oval’s 2016 models.

It’s almost more jarring here, because it is so out of, ahem, sync with the rest of what the Focus ST has to offer.

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