Ford Puma ST spied
Like a Fiesta ST, but need it taller and uglier? Here's the car!
This presents something of a dilemma. The Ford Puma "SUV-inspired crossover", set to arrive with customers in the new year, is not really a PH kinda car: it besmirches the great Puma name to enthusiasts, made famous 20 years ago, it looks a bit dumpy and the First Edition is £25k. But the Fiesta ST most certainly is a PH car: fast, fun, relatively simple and good value.
So what happens when the two are combined? Because that's what we're looking at here, the Fiesta-derived Puma having been subjected to the ST overhaul. Look, it has the same exhausts, wheels from a Focus ST and a sporty little bodykit.
That a car looking like this is three-wheeling its way around the Nurburgring would surely imply that this is a Puma that borrows running gear from the 200hp Fiesta. Makes eminent sense, too: the demand is surely there for performance SUVs of all sizes - to the extent that it's odd more aren't yet offered - and you could get the PH staff to do the chassis set up and still end up with a sweet handling car. Because the Fiesta platform is so good. Of course, the concern in creating a Puma like the Fiesta flagship, with its raised ride height and loftier centre of gravity, is not only that it won't quite match the Fiesta, but also that it will be incredibly stiff. The hatch is pretty fidgety already, so the inevitable toughening up of a larger car attempting to emulate it could be troublesome. Certainly that rear axle looks stiff enough already...
Take this as confirmation, then, that the Ford ST family will be extending into SUVs; or rather, ones that might have a little more relevance in the UK than the Explorer. Expect a full announcement from Ford in the new year some time, along with a glut of rivals in due course: another NISMO Juke, something sporty out of the Arona/T-Cross/Kamiq trio, perhaps even a Renault Sport crossover. Stranger things have happened. This Puma might be quite a nice driving little car, for starters. More details soon...
Images: S. Baldauf/S.B. Medien
Edit: also, that Dazzle camo really is a headf
k if you look at it too long. Love it.
|https://thumbsnap.com/1b7oq3vY[/url]
A nice coupe version of the Fiesta would have been nice. But I guess everyone want's bloody SUV's
Sadly they'll make more money out of it as an SUV and hence we'll end up having to look at them all over the bloody place.
I think the camo this car is wearing is a pre-launch one that is intended to show off the shape, (hopefully) they use a lot more effective one for actual camo earlier in the project - in most OEMs it's usually augmented early on by hard camo as well underneath the wrap.
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