BUYERS of the new Ford Focus, it would seem, are missing a trick.

When the latest generation of the popular hatchback was launched during the spring, Ford set great store by what the company calls Smart Affordable Technology.

This is a range of optional extras that not only sharpen up the car's style but also make the Focus both supremely safe and more convenient to use.

The most valuable of these is arguably the £750 Driver Assistance pack which comprises seven useful elements - from Active City Stop, which helps prevent rear-end collisions, to a lane departure warning and blind spot flasher.

And if shoehorning the car into tight parking places is a source of frustration then the £525 Convenience pack, part of which enables the car to park itself, is a must.

Yet of the 15,000 Focus sales so far registered, only 15 per cent of buyers have gone for Driver Assistance and a mere ten per cent for Convenience.

Those figures may yet change with the advent of another body style.

The latest car from the blue oval stable to hit the streets is the all-new Focus Estate and Ford chiefs are confident this range will prove appreciably more popular than its predecessor.

And it comes down to not only being better-looking and more upmarket but also for the reason most folk buy estates in the first place - practicality.

The comprehensive standard kit and optional extras - like the self-parking - are there as well, but it's the usable space in this model that really impresses - we're talking the sort of capacity you would previously have expected from a Mondeo, but in a smaller size of car.

That said, the new Focus Estate is some 20cms longer than the five-door model, has greater width and a maximum load capacity - in two-seat mode - of a cavernous 1,502 litres.

There's no wheel arch intrusion like in the previous generation estate and a handy touch is the slap factor, whereby the boot tonneau cover opens with a single touch.

Ford is predicting this stylish addition to the line-up will account for 18 per cent of Focus sales, which is a 50 per cent increase on its predecessor.

The estate is also available with the same choice of engines as the five-door, which include a 1.6-litre TDCi diesel with auto Start-Stop and CO2 emissions as low as 109g/km.

While this unit is under the bonnet of 43 per cent of all new Focus models in the UK, the frugal 1.6-litre EcoBoost 150PS turbocharged petrol engine - an absolutely cracking powerplant - only accounts for eight per cent. It is, however, only available in higher spec Titanium and Titanium X models.

There are also 1.6-litre 105PS petrol and 2.0-litre diesel units and prices are from £17,100 for the Focus Estate 1.6 petrol Edge model, though more than £1,000 worth of additional standard equipment is included over the outgoing entry level Style version.

Every car also comes with Bluetooth and voice control, USB connection, DAB, category one alarm, aluminium roof rails, driver lumbar adjust and torque vectoring control as standard.

That's in addition to a driving experience, degree of comfort and equipment list that puts the Focus up with the premium brands.

And there's more to come too. A Focus Zetec S with 1.6-litre 180PS EcoBoost powertrain arrives later this year while 2012 sees a fiery Focus ST, a Focus ECOnetic model targeting sub-95g/km and a Focus Electric model joining the party.