Ford Puma ST Review & Prices

The Ford Puma ST is a very fun, practical and handsome little SUV, but you can think of it more like a hot hatch on stilts. It’s stylish, too, but very uncomfortable to drive around town and it’s expensive to buy.

It’s part of a dying breed, because small sporty cars like this are few and far between these days. You can cross-shop it against the Volkswagen Polo GTI hatchback or Skoda Fabia 130 as they’re pretty much the same size, but that’s about it for petrol alternatives. The Abarth 600e and Alfa Romeo Junior Veloce are suitably sporty and yobbish, if you’re open to an electric SUV.

Think of the Puma ST as your dad wearing his gym clothes to the shops. Deep down it’s sensible and family-focused, but it not only looks athletic - it’s properly sporty when the time is right.

The Puma ST really does look good in all of its sporty gear, far more aggressive and head-turning than the regular Ford Puma. Swanky LED headlights, aggressive bumpers with a wide lower grille and lower lip, pumped-up wheel arches and a small boot spoiler come together very nicely indeed.

Step inside, however, and things aren’t anywhere near as well resolved. Sure, you get a pair of excellent, figure-hugging bucket seats up front with lots of red stitching, but they’re only suited to those with a slender build and the dashboard design is just as unremarkable as in the regular Puma. The 12.0-inch infotainment screen looks haphazardly placed on the dashboard, while all of the plastic surfaces feel hard and scratchy.

The cabin is spacious up front and the door bins are long, but bottles get in the way of the handbrake as the cupholders are right next door to the lever. Back seat space is cramped, while the wide bucket seat shoulders mean it’s quite dark as a back seat passenger. The 456-litre boot is very generous, that being said, with terrific under-floor storage.

Engine choice is limited to a 1.0-litre mild hybrid three-cylinder unit, paired with an automatic gearbox. It makes 170hp which can be described as mildly spicy, but considering the earlier version had 200hp and a six-speed manual transmission, the Puma ST has lost some of its driving appeal.

Not that there’s a huge amount of appeal around town, because its super-sporty suspension is positively bone-rattling on rough roads. Speed bumps can feel like mountains, while potholes thud through the car. The slow, jerky gearbox frustrates, as it makes for uneasy acceleration away from the lights and feels clunky when parking. The active cruise control system is excellent on the motorway, but the engine is gruff when accelerating and there’s lots of tyre noise.

Point the Puma ST to a country lane, however, and you’ll have a great time. The suspension is surprisingly pliant over bumpy country lanes, which helps keep your confidence up as you push the fast Ford into a corner.

Buckets of grip and darty steering mean the baby SUV feels properly agile, while you can even feel the tail coming around on a tight bend with a quick lift off of the accelerator; old-school hot hatch thrills.

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The Ford Puma ST starts at almost £34,000, and that’s a whole lot of money for a tiny, petrol-powered SUV. The Volkswagen Polo GTI is over £2,000 cheaper, and while it’s not quite as fun to drive, it’s far more comfortable and more premium than the Ford.

The Puma comes as standard with 19-inch alloy wheels, Matrix LED headlights, rear privacy glass, powerfold mirrors, bucket seats up front and Ford’s excellent ‘Quickclear’ heated windscreen.

The Puma ST is great fun for a small SUV, being agile, grippy, fast and engaging. The trade-off is a ride that’s definitely on the firm side

In town

While the Puma is one of our favourite small SUVs to drive around town, and the ST version shares a lot of its good traits, you can certainly feel the compromise in Ford’s effort to turn it into a performance car.

The 1.0-litre engine sounds gruff when you pull away from the lights, and while acceleration is brisk, the gearbox can be woefully slow to select a cog - and it’s jerky in the process. A small detail, but by having the gearbox ‘sport’ mode below ‘drive’ with no lock-out, it’s far too easy to slide it into the more aggressive setting by accident.

You get good visibility all around, even if the rear window is a bit small, and the Puma’s dinky dimensions make it easy to dart in and out of small gaps. All-round parking sensors are standard-fit to make parking a breeze, too.

However, it’s very uncomfortable over bumps. If the roads around your local Tesco closely resemble the lunar surface you might find the Puma ST’s suspension quickly starts to grate. You jostle, jiggle and crash your way across bad roads and it can become tiresome, so think about how you plan to use the car and whether this is a concession you’re willing to make to enjoy its fantastic cornering ability.

On the motorway

Things settle down slightly on the motorway, where the Puma ST is (ever so slightly) less jiggly and jostly. The responsive steering can make it difficult to relax on a longer journey, but it’s a minor issue.

It’s far from the last word in refinement, but for a small, sporty SUV it’s good enough. There’s certainly more tyre roar than the regular Puma because of those big alloy wheels and low profile tyres, but it’s unlikely to be enough to put you off.

It's even more pronounced with the Handling Pack option ticked thanks to the even sportier suspension, which really jolts you around on anything other than a smooth road.

Active cruise control is fitted as standard, so this helps take some of the stress out of your motorway miles, while lane assist is there to stop you drifting over the white lines.

On a twisty road

The Puma ST may technically be an SUV, but nobody seems to have told it that as you’d never tell on a country lane. You might expect it to feel a bit heavy and cumbersome, but it’s really very agile around tight bends.

While the 1.0-litre engine is a bit weedy compared to the 2.0-litre unit in the Polo GTI, it has a rorty exhaust note and thrums aggressively when you step on it at higher speeds.

Chuck it into a bend and the Puma ST feels remarkably composed, and while we were expecting it to leap and bound over our bumpy test route through the Bedford countryside it stayed remarkably well composed with the Handling Pack’s trick suspension fitted. The steering is very responsive and darty while the little Ford never seems to run out of grip.

Lift your foot off the throttle abruptly around a corner and the Puma ST rotates like a proper hot hatch, while the near-total lack of body lean for an SUV fills you with confidence at speed. If only it had some better brakes, because they’re a bit spongy, lacking bite compared to a proper hot hatch.

The Puma ST is just as roomy as the regular model, with decent passenger space and a useful boot, but the rear seats are too cramped for three

The main advantage of buying the Puma ST over, say, the Fiesta ST is that it offers more room for passengers and luggage alike.

Even those well over six-feet-tall won’t have much trouble getting comfortable in the front. There’s plenty of adjustment in the steering wheel and sporty Recaro seats, although some may find that the seat doesn’t go low enough for their tastes. This is a classic fast Ford trait that’s more forgivable in the Puma ST because it’s meant to be a high-riding car.

The Puma ST gets the same level of storage as the standard Puma. The glovebox is pretty large, there are cupholders in the centre console, and there’s a handy storage tray beneath the dashboard. This features a wireless charge pad on higher-spec models. There are a number of USB ports dotted around the cabin too.

There’s also a storage compartment beneath the front armrest, but it isn’t all that big. Still, it’s deep enough to hold a one-litre bottle of water securely in place.

Space in the back seats

It’s a shame that the rear seats are basically the same shape as the standard Puma’s, without any added raciness, but they are at least covered in the same suede upholstery as the fronts.

Despite the chunkier seats in front, there isn’t much effect on rear seat space, which is decent; a couple of six footers could sit behind themselves without too many complaints.

The front seats have integrated headrests, though, so they block the view out from the rear more than in the regular Puma.

It isn’t the widest SUV around, so an adult in the middle seat struggles for shoulder room, while headroom isn’t overly generous either. The rear door bins are big enough to hold a regular bottle and you get some pockets on the back of the front seats.

Boot space

There is no compromise to the boot space of the Puma ST when compared to the standard Puma. It still has a surprisingly large luggage space for the car’s size, with a 456-litre capacity.

At first glance there is nothing special about the Puma’s boot – it’s well-shaped, there are some hooks and tie-down points and an adjustable boot floor. But it’s what’s under that boot floor that’s pretty unique.

Every Puma gets what’s known as a ‘Megabox’; a deep, rubberised storage area that can be drained to below the car. The idea is that you could, for example, fill it with ice and store drinks, or chuck muddy boots inside and hose it down afterwards. It’s a really neat touch.

The competition doesn't have anything quite so quirky, and as a result it’s only the more expensive (and larger) Cupra Formentor that can compare to the Puma’s boot capacity at 450 litres. The Volkswagen Polo GTI can’t come near the Puma, with only 305 litres of space in the back.

The Puma’s cabin is practical and well-equipped, while sporty ST touches are welcome. There are better quality alternatives, though

The key upgrades over the regular Puma are the Recaro bucket seats up front. They’re very supportive, trimmed in sporty leather and Alcantara. While they’re comfortable over long drives, they’re not the best choice if you’re an individual of a larger build as they are very body hugging, both on the bolsters and seat bases.

Most Puma STs come with Ford’s odd (ugly) squared-off, two-spoke steering wheel, which is out of place in a sporty car. Opt for the Handling Pack, however, and you get a proper, round, three-spoke item instead. Lovely.

The rest of the cabin is a bit dour, to be honest. ST badging and red stitching elevate it over the normal Puma, but material quality is poor, with lots of hard plastics in easy-to-reach places such as the dashboard and door tops. The soundbar across the top of the dash looks funky, but otherwise the placement of the 12.0-inch infotainment screen and air vents is cluttered.

The infotainment in the Puma ST is, unsurprisingly, much like that in the regular Puma. However there are some specific new graphics and features. For example, you get a racy-looking Ford Performance graphic on the screen on startup, while the digital dials change colour and graphics depending on the selected drive mode.

The Puma ST’s 1.0-litre petrol engine makes 170hp and 248Nm of torque. It uses a mild hybrid system, which has minor fuel economy benefits, registering 44.8mpg in official tests. It’s only available with a seven-speed automatic gearbox, which takes some of the fun out of driving small, fast, practical cars, which are usually most enjoyable with a manual gearbox.

We came close to reaching the official figures up the M1 motorway, managing 40.1mpg on a relatively clear run, while we could only manage 36mpg with regular driving around North London. Combined with some spirited driving on A-roads around Bedfordshire that figure dropped to 30.3mpg, which isn’t bad for a performance car.

You won’t pay the luxury car supplement on the Puma ST, even if you tick every option, while first-year road tax sits around the middle band, as the little Ford emits 135g/km of CO2 emissions.

You’re better off looking at a plug-in hybrid-powered car for a low Benefit-in-Kind rate as a company car driver, such as a Volkswagen Golf GTE, but it is larger and less sporty to drive.

Ford came 23rd out of 31 brands in the 2025 Driver Power survey for owner satisfaction, which is far from a confidence-inspiring result. Even as a sporty car, servicing costs won’t be too high from Ford.

All Fords come with a three-year/60,000-mile warranty. That’s about the basic expectation among manufacturers, in line with Volkswagen, but it’s well behind Toyota and Suzuki’s self-extending ten-year, 100,000-mile coverage, with regular servicing.

Ford has a hit-and-miss reputation for reliability, but with the Puma based largely on the Fiesta it shouldn’t prove too problematic. And with so many of these models sold, there are plenty of affordable parts available should something go wrong.

All Fords come with a three-year/60,000-mile warranty. That’s about the basic expectation among manufacturers, but it’s well behind Hyundai’s five-year/unlimited mileage warranty, which is one of the best in the business and could make the Kona N more appealing.