Ford Puma

Right off the bat, I’m going to blame you – dear reader – for the plight of Ford’s shrinking passenger vehicle line. You'll see, though, that it's a transparent attempt to create tension in your mind that I'm genuinely mad at you. I'm not really; it's just a literary device to keep you reading, so play along, it should be a laugh.

The Focus wagon was an early casualty within a year of going on sale, the Focus hatch is now gone unless it’s an (excellent) ST, the (again, excellent) Fiesta can only be had in ST form and apart from that, it’s SUVs and utes. Oh, and Mustangs. The Focus and Fiesta are both great cars and you let them die. Shame on you. Collectively of course. Don’t feel too bad though, some of you did what you could.

The Ford Puma is probably not going to die but it should be in far ruder health than it is. While folks are still unaccountably buying thousands of the two oldest SUVs in the market – Mazda’s still-good CX-3 and Mitsubishi’s emphatically not very good ASX – the Puma struggled to just over 3000 units in 2021. If you’d been desperate for a car last year and bought most other compact SUVs and not this one you probably paid too much and waited too long.

You can tell I feel very strongly about this. And not because I’m a Ford fan per se – I’ve never owned one. But when I stand back and look at just how good is the Puma and how ordinary some of its competition is, I have to wonder what on earth is going on.

Pricing and Features

Your $32,340 buys you this mid-spec ST-Line, which sits above the base-spec Puma and below the ST-Line V (for Vignale). You get 17-inch alloys, a six-speaker stereo, single-zone climate control, leather wheel, digital dashboard, cloth seats, reversing camera, cruise control, auto LED headlights, auto wipers and a space-saver spare.

An 8.0-inch touchscreen familiar from the Fiesta ST and Focus sprouts out of the dashboard offering sat nav, DAB+, AM/FM as well as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It works quite well and runs Ford’s SYNC3 system which is a far cry from its earlier efforts and vastly better than some of its segment fellows’ software. Sadly the phone integrations require USB.

One USB-A port is awkwardly placed in the console next to the driver’s left knee and there’s a USB-C port in console bin. This means the wireless charging pad is really only useful for a second phone in the car.

When I stand back and look at just how good is the Puma and how ordinary some of its competition is, I wonder what on earth is going on

The Puma’s safety equipment includes six airbags, the usual traction and stability controls, forward AEB, lane keep assist with lane departure warning, traffic sign recognition, forward collision warning and if you stick it on its roof or into a tree, it will call in the cavalry for you if there’s mobile coverage.

The forward AEB and collision warning works at both high and low speeds.

The $990 Park Pack adds self-parking, adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, evasive steering assist and front parking sensors. Irritatingly, there is no reverse cross-traffic alert or rear AEB available even as an option.

The Puma range scored a five-star ANCAP safety rating in 2019.

The other options on the ST-Line are a selection of $650 paint colours and the $750 electric tailgate which also adds keyless entry and the $2000 panorama roof which nicks headroom but not too much.

Comfort and space

The ST-Line’s Goldilocks spec includes an improved pair of front seats with more adjustment, support and a slightly sportier fabric combination. I found them very comfortable but they are manually adjusted so if you’re sharing this with another driver of very different proportions to you, that might be worth knowing.

You get a handy phone spot with wireless charging at the base of the centre stack, two cupholders in the console and door pockets with bottle holders.

When you remember that it’s based on the Fiesta, Ford has taken the extra height afforded by the SUV bodyshell and actually delivered more space as a result

Moving to the rear, you get small door pockets to put some small things. What you don’t get is an armrest or cupholders, nor do you get rear air vents, a bit of a hobby horse of mine. The seats themselves are comfortable and my lanky son folded himself through the small-ish door apertures but was comfortable enough for the short Christmas Day trip to my parents (“Can I take my car?” No. “Why?” I need you to test the back seat for me. It’s also not your car.)

The boot is a huge 410 litres when you add together all of the space. The boot floor lifts to reveal a really big secondary space and the spare is under there as well. This kind of space really embarrasses many cars of similar dimensions as well as some in the next size up. When you remember that it’s based on the Fiesta, Ford has taken the extra height afforded by the SUV bodyshell and actually delivered more space as a result.

On the road

If it’s Euro style you want in your engine, the Puma delivers. Ford has gone with a tiny 1.0-litre turbocharged three-cylinder, which spins up 92kW at 6000rpm and 172Nm between 1500rpm and 4500rpm. That’s an impressive number for a displacement the same as a milk carton. Power is delivered to the front wheels via a seven-speed twin-clutch automatic transmission which is…well, it’s not the best but at least it isn’t a CVT or the terrible old PowerShift transmission that got everyone up in arms.

Rather sadly, we don’t get the 48-volt mild hybrid offered in Europe and for some insane reason we also don’t get the full-fat ST version, with Ford Australia probably mumbling something about it only being manual or whatever. I get the price-sensitivity of the hybrids and a general buyer apathy in this segment about those sorts of things but locking out the ST, especially given this car’s global platform in the WRC from 2022, seems a mite silly. Australians have been, historically speaking, rather fond of rallying connections (*cough* Yaris GR *cough*).

Anyway.

I’m going to tell you right now that the Puma is a ball of fun to drive, specifically in ST-Line form. It rides a little lower than the entry-level but shares pretty much everything else with it. As is the Ford way, the steering is really quick, with a fantastic change of direction, not something you commonly associate with a small SUV.

Few cars in this segment have any kind of get up and go – it’s almost like there’s legislation limiting compact SUVs to around 100kW/200Nm. A Toyota C-HR with a 1.2-litre turbo four isn’t nearly as sprightly. The 1.0-litre triple sounds terrific in a fairly distant kind of way and delivers its power and torque without the peakiness you might expect from such a small turbo engine.

As is the Ford way, the steering is really quick, with a fantastic change of direction, not something you commonly associate with a small SUV

The transmission could be a little more enthusiastic – and is in Sport mode, one of the several selectable modes – but is really the only part of the drivetrain I’m not in love with. And the mode selection button is in a stupid place on the console, not readily identifiable and every time you start the car, it reverts to the less capable comfort mode.

Ford of Europe’s chassis department is clearly staffed with a bunch of hoons who are entirely correct when they apply a sporting philosophy to a chassis. There’s a reason that someone who steps out of a Corolla and into, say, the driver’s seat of a rear-wheel drive 1 Series (RIP) and says, “Oh, this feels much better.” Firmish damping, lots of thought put into the way it brakes, steers and turns delivering that nice-to-drive feeling for most people and, “Oh, this is good” for people who care about how the car feels.

A little disappointing was the real-world fuel consumption. I got an even 8.0L/100km in the week and a bit I had it  – granted the climate control probably had to extract more water from the air than is normal given how disgustingly humid it was in late December/early January in Sydney, but it’s a fair way off the claimed 5.3L/100km of the ADR figure. The WLTP of 5.8 is closer, but not close enough.

Ownership

Ford’s competitive 5-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty comes with a four-year/60,000km fixed-price service package. Each of the first four services (up to four years) is $299 and you’ll need to visit the dealer once every 12 months or 15,000km. After that, it seems to move up to $320 per service, which is still okay going if not outstandingly cheap.

The Ford website actually gives service pricing well beyond the first four years, but only guarantees the price of the first four.

Ford will hand you a loan car if you’ve remembered to book one.

VERDICT

Nothing else in the segment is quite like it and I’m firmly of the opinion that if more people considered the Puma in their search, they’d buy it after driving it. Not even the more expensive (and inexplicably hybrid) Toyota C-HR GR Sport is as much fun as the Puma, good as it is.

The Puma is at least the right car for the market it’s just that the market isn’t paying it the attention its overall quality suggests it should. And that's a shame because while it isn't the best at every single thing it does, it's better than so many others in the segment.