Thursday 31st October 2019

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

[FA57REN]

What bemuses me more than a warm version of an SUV version of a hatchback is... How car manufacturers have completely lost the point of dazzle camouflage. It's meant to break-up the lines of an object...