It looks just like any other Focus which might not get more than a passing glance. But the eagle-eyed might be intrigued by the little badge on the left of the rear door.

And anyone walking all the way around will possibly spot the fact that it has a fuel filler hatch on BOTH flanks.

Curiosity thus prompted might note there’s a second fuel gauge to the left of the steering wheel.

A long-distance Focus?

Somebody who lives very far from a petrol station? Not quite. It’s the bi-fuel Focus which has been rolling into the parking spaces of a number of fleet operators in Ireland since last May.

And gaining a certain interest from those with an environmental conscience.

Ford has been mentioning the car to Government too, looking for an environmental conscience lurking inside some departmental corner.

The Focus in question has both an LPG tank and a petrol tank. Nothing radical there ... we’ve had gas conversions for a long time, though they’ve never come massively popular except in the middle of an oil crisis. And conversions have proved to have their downsides. Not least the loss of boot space, a perception of power loss, and occasionally difficulties with valve burnouts.

This Focus bi-fuel is straight from a Ford factory, designed and built to be equally at home with both fuels without any side-effects. Its engine is based on the 1.8-litre Zetec petrol unit, so there’s ample poke. And components such as valves and valve seats have been hardened so that they can operate with gaseous fuel that has neither cooling or lubricating qualities.

The boot space problem of having two fuel tanks is overcome by putting the gas tank in the wheel well, and giving the owner a tyre sealant kit instead of a spare wheel.

(When my wife used a sealant on a puncture recently, I was told later by the tyre centre that the tyre might not have been repairable. We need clarification, from both the tyre people and the sealant kit manufacturers.)

Why use LPG, though? And why not just have an LPG tank in place of the petrol one?

OK ... LPG is cheaper per litre (though not as efficient in power/litre) than petrol. It also produces 80% less noxious emissions than the equivalent petrol engine will emit (though the CO2 ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions are the same).

There’s still a need for a petrol tank because the car has to start on petrol ... and because gas is not as widely available as petrol. In this Focus, the range on LPG is 270 kilometres or around 170 miles, not a long way between refills.

So what was it like to drive? Nippy, because we were running on a 1.8-litre that had a nice sporty growl when I pushed it. Satisfying, because the Focus is still a benchmark in its class for ride and handling. And solid, because the same car is probably as tough as they come.

And then what’s to say? It drives like a Focus. Full stop. There was no apparent difference in driving between the two fuels, except that the gas tank needed to be replenished more often.

A niggle: the gas gauge was unreliable. You could park the car at night thinking there was almost nothing left, and the next morning you found you had half a tank again. Probably something to do with ambient temperature.

Other than that, all I can say is that it was nice to drive a Focus again. It always is.

As to the bi-fuel’s future here? That depends on Government. I don’t have a price for the car, but it has to be more expensive to buy than a standard Focus, not least because of the 1.8-litre engine.

The number of punters who will buy because of their interest in the environment is pretty small. Probably greater, though, than the number of Government ministers and departmental mandarins in Ireland who will be willing to put the ecology of the planet ahead of the revenue take from motoring.

It seems certain that we’re going to have a revised system of car taxation based on CO2 emissions, because that can be imposed with an assumed ‘grand morality’ attitude by the state leaders. There is a public acceptance that ‘greenhouse gases’ must be cut (though cars are responsible for only around 1 per cent of these).

But providing a tax INCENTIVE towards running (more expensive) cars which produce fewer noxious emissions such as nitrogen oxides (ask most anyone what’s nitrogen and he’ll probably answer: laughing gas) is unlikely to be high on the Governmental agenda.

Even if, as Ford’s Irish boss Eddie Murphy says, vehicles such as the bi-fuel Ford Focus represent ‘a practical contribution to emissions reduction’ which warrant a favourable tax treatment.