Ford Puma Review & Prices

The Ford Puma has been the UK's best selling car for a couple of years now. It’s a handsome, sporty and practical little SUV, but the interior is lacklustre and its alternatives are more comfortable.

And where the Volkswagen T-Cross is posher, the Peugeot 2008 is more stylish, the Toyota Yaris Cross is smarter and the Skoda Kamiq is more sensible, the Puma is the sporty, popular mate of the bunch.

Ford gave the Puma a major update in 2024, with a pair of swish new headlights and a tidier front grille. It’s a great looking little SUV, with loads of curves, a sporty shoulder line and pumped-up wheel arches in ST-Line trim level.

The interior received an even bigger change with the update, namely a whole new interior layout with an enormous 12.0-inch infotainment screen and 10.0-inch digital driver’s display. Unfortunately, the dashboard doesn’t look all that good, with a messy design and unintuitive touchscreen controls, as well as cheap feeling plastics all around you.

You get adequate room up front, and while there’s a surplus of cupholders there isn’t much in the way of storage for front-seat passengers. Those in the back will feel cramped, and the middle seat is all but unusable unless you’re carrying three young children around.

There’s loads of boot space as a result of the small cabin though, and at 456 litres the Puma is the biggest of the small SUV bunch. You get a handy bit of hose-down underfloor storage, too, with a drain plug for muddy boots - or even use as an ice box.

Engine options are slim in the Puma, with every choice being a variant of a 1.0-litre, mild hybrid, three-cylinder unit, in 125hp or 155hp versions. The Puma feels at home around town, thanks to its light steering and responsive brakes, though you’re best opting for an automatic model. A tight turning circle helps when parking in tight spaces, but rear visibility isn’t great so you’ll want the optional rear-view camera.

The Puma gets shaken around on rough roads as a result of its sporty suspension, and while it’s not hugely refined on the motorway, the little SUV feels most at home on a twisty road. There’s little in the way of body lean and it’ll put a smile on your face when carving through corners, but you still get bounced around on a broken country lane. If you want the most driving thills, check out the range-topping hot-hatch-SUV-combo Puma ST.

Check out new Ford Puma deals on Carwow, or alternatively, have a look at Ford Puma lease deals instead. There are used Ford Pumas available through our network of trusted dealers, and other used Fords for sale if the Puma is a bit too small for you. Carwow can even help you sell your car when the time comes.

The entry-level Ford Puma Titanium starts at under £27,000, putting it on par with the Toyota Yaris Cross but around £1,000 more than the Volkswagen T-Cross and £500 less than the Peugeot 2008.

That’s with the standard-fit 125hp 1.0-litre engine and manual gearbox, but you’ll pay almost £2,000 more for the same engine with an automatic gearbox. ST-Line X models can be had with the more powerful 155hp engine - only available with the automatic gearbox - but that’s with a £5,000 jump over the most basic Puma Titanium.

At the top of the range is the Puma Sound Edition, but with a colour other than the basic white you’re looking at almost £35,000, which puts it directly in line with the more stylish Peugeot 2008 with its more powerful - and more economical - hybrid engine and far nicer interior.

It’s easy to drive around town, but the Puma isn’t very comfortable and it’s best enjoyed on a twisty road

In town

The Puma has light steering and a nice — if slightly notchy — gear change, so it’s pretty gentle on the nerves when driving around town. The clutch pedal is light, and the powerful brakes are very easy to judge in traffic, making the Puma very user friendly and easy to drive.

Urban U-turns are a doddle thanks to the Puma’s tight 10.4-metre turning circle, though that’s on par with the Peugeot 2008. There’s an optional rear camera with a 180-degree view that’s really helpful when parking, which is good as the rear visibility is only OK - a common issue for small SUVs such as this with a fairly small rear window.

It doesn’t help that you don’t really sit up all that high, especially when compared to the seating positions of alternatives; like you’re sitting in a conventional hatchback. You certainly feel urban bumps more than you would in a Renault Captur or Lexus LBX - a downside of the Puma’s sporty feel - and the problem is worse again for ST-Line models because they get even stiffer suspension than the base model car.

On the motorway

The Puma’s not the quietest car at speed, but then you hardly expect Mercedes S-Class refinement at this price. It’s absolutely fine on the motorway, with really little enough to complain about. The modest 1.0-litre turbo three-cylinder engine might not sound like much, but the 155hp version picks up strongly at motorway speeds when you need to get a move on, and even the 125hp version feels a little more muscular than you might expect, thanks to the extra little bit of assistance that the mild-hybrid system adds. Brilliant on the motorway? No, but entirely acceptable.

On a twisty road

Twisty roads are where the Puma really comes to life. It’s really good fun on a B-road, with responsive, darty steering and those responsive brakes giving you the confidence to carry speed into tight corners.

The only problem is, again, the jiggly suspension. Although it does smooth out a bit at speed, on a road with lots of bumps you’re going to get seriously jostled and bounced around the place.

The properly sporty ST version, with its 170hp engine, is even more thrilling on the right road, but it’s also even more firmly sprung and it has really hard, tight-fitting seats.

Clever boot, but hard plastics and the figure-hugging seats on sports models won’t be for everyone

The Puma is fine up-front for practicality. There’s a decent storage area in front of the gear lever and no fewer than three cup holders too. The door bins are a bit small, but acceptable enough for the type of car (although they’re made of very hard plastic so anything in there is going to rattle plenty). The glovebox is fine, and some models get an extra storage box under the front seat armrest, which is useful. Sportier models get quite narrow-fitting bucket seats, which aren’t the most comfortable if you’re on the broad side…

Space in the back seats

It’s not a very roomy car in the back, the Puma. It’s OK if you’re only trying to carry two people, but Ford may as well not bother fitting a middle rear seatbelt, as there’s definitely not enough room for three adults in the back. Three kids might just fit, but you’re going to struggle when it comes to bulky child car safety seats. That said, getting two child seats in is easy enough as the doors open wide, and there are ISOFIX anchors in the outer two rear seats.

Headroom isn’t great, and if you get a model with the optional panoramic glass roof, then it’s even worse again. A Skoda Kamiq has the Puma well beaten for rear seat space.

Boot space

The Puma’s boot makes up a bit for the back seats. At 456 litres, it has one single, solitary litre extra compared to a Volkswagen T-Cross (and you have to have the T-Cross’ back seat pushed right forward to get that much space). It’s a big, square space and although there is a slight loading lip, it’s not too bad. You get some helpful tie-down points, luggage hooks, and a 12-volt socket too. The light, flexible luggage cover is easy to use too, and stores under the floor when you don’t need it.

The rear seats split-fold in 60:40 ratio, and while the floor isn’t completely flat up to the front seats, you do get 1,216-litres of space. Annoyingly, though, the rear seatbelts get easily trapped when you’re putting the seats back up.

The Puma’s party trick is the ‘Megabox’. A silly name for a useful 80-litre storage box that sits under the boot floor (and which means you don’t get a spare wheel), the Megabox is designed for either hiding away valuables, or for carrying tall items like… a lamp? A potted plant? An upright set of golf clubs? It also has a drain plug, so if you’ve filled your Megabox with something grubby and smelly — sports gear or mud-encrusted wellies maybe — you can just pull the plug and hose it all out. Which means you could also leave the plug in, fill the Megabox with warm water, and use it as a portable foot spa. What other SUV can offer that, eh?

Blocky looks might be to your taste - but the cheap plastics definitely won’t be

The Puma’s 2024 update brought with it a totally new dashboard, but unfortunately, while technology levels took an uptick, design, ease-of-use and material quality all took a dive in the process.

The dashboard centres around a huge 12.0-inch touchscreen which almost seems too big for the space it has to occupy. It has to be big as it contains almost all of the Puma’s controls - a few shortcut keys underneath it are all you get outside of the steering wheel buttons.

This means that even your climate controls are operated through the touchscreen. The screen itself is big, clear and quite responsive, but it’s still a pain trying to hit some of the smaller on-screen buttons when you’re on the move. Luckily Ford’s infotainment software doesn’t have too many of these, certainly not as many as you get in an MG ZS.

You also get a standard 10.0-inch digital gauge cluster. The design around this is particularly uninspired, though, almost as if it was an afterthought. All the information you need is there, it’s just not as attractively displayed as you get with a Volkswagen T-Cross’ digital gauges.

Further spoiling matters is the steering wheel. It feels like the same one from the Ford Transit Custom (minus the clever tilting tabletop feature) and as a result it seems far too big for the little Puma. Its squared-off shape is a bit bizarre, too.

Poor material quality is another bugbear. While items like the steering wheel and gear shifter are soft and premium to the touch, the dash plastics themselves are a combination of fingerprint-susceptible piano black and hard plastic with an unpleasant veined texture.

Compared with the solid build of a Yaris Cross or the plush finish of a Peugeot 2008, it’s rather jarring. At least the Puma’s seats are comfortable and, on higher-spec models, swathed in pleasant faux-suede upholstery.

The Puma is sometimes referred to as a hybrid, but it’s not really. It’s not like a Toyota hybrid that allows the car to drive on just electric power for small bursts. It’s a ‘mild-hybrid’ which means it gets a tiny rechargeable battery which allows the stop-start system to shut the engine off earlier in around-town traffic, and keep it off for longer. It also runs some of the car’s electrical systems to take a bit of strain off the petrol engine, so that helps a bit with economy, and it can also boost the engine’s power and torque just a little when you’re accelerating hard.

It doesn’t actually add up to an economy figure that’s all that brilliant, though. The 125hp version of the 1.0-litre ‘EcoBoost’ three-cylinder engine quotes a best-effort of 52.3mpg on the combined fuel economy test, but you might struggle to reach that in real-world conditions.

The 155hp is thirstier still — an official 50.4mpg, but we only got 42mpg out of it on test. A Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid has a more sophisticated hybrid system and it can do better than 60mpg in real-world conditions. 

At least the mild-hybrid system does keep emissions under some control — The basic 125hp engine has emissions of 122g/km, so you’ll pay £190 for your first year’s road fund licence.

The Puma scored five stars when tested by Euro NCAP in 2019, but a retest in 2022 dropped this to four stars. That doesn't mean that it's got any less safe, of course - just that the goalposts have moved. The scores are therefore pretty mediocre - just 75 per cent in the adult occupant category, and 69 per cent in the safety assist category.

Basic Pumas come with rear parking sensors, forward collision warning with automatic braking that can detect pedestrians and cyclists, cruise control with a speed limiter that can rear road signs and automatically adjust, lane-keeping steering, and automatic headlights with an automated high-beam system that dips the lights for you at night. Oh, and rain-sensing wipers too.

All Pumas also get Ford’s useful ‘QuickClear’ heated windscreen which is a real boon on a frosty day. Higher spec models get radar-guidance for the cruise control, which will keep you a safe distance from the car in front, along with a blind-spot warning that will stop you from pulling out into the path of another car. There’s also an evasive steering feature that can help you steer around danger, swerving you away from a potential collision.

Ford came a lowly 23rd out of 31 manufacturers entered into the 2025 Driver Power survey for owner satisfaction, which isn’t a confidence-inspiring result for your new purchase. Not that it’s stopping the Puma from selling like hotcakes, though.

The 48-volt mild hybrid system is pretty new, so it’s unclear how well that will last in the long term, and some of the cabin trim could be nicer, so it remains to be seen how well that will all hold together. There haven’t been any horror stories to do with the Puma so far, that being said.

You only get a three year, 60,000 mile warranty with the Puma. That’s on par with most of its European alternatives, but lags behind Toyota and Lexus with their phenomenal ten-year, 100,000-mile warranties - so long as you keep up main dealer servicing.