It seems every manufacturer feels that buyers are after a sporty SUV, after successes of larger, European models like the Audi RSQ range, BMW’s M SUV models, and the huge range of AMG SUVs available in New Zealand.
So it might feel that every manufacturer now has at least one super-sporty SUV in its range, and Ford is no exception to that, sending us its small and sporty Puma ST to review.
Some sporty SUVs seem a bit pointless; sure, Sport is part of the acronym ‘SUV’, but when most buyers want more Utility than Sport, is there a market for cars like the Puma ST? We spent a week and over 1,000km behind the wheel to find out.
What We Like and Dislike About The 2024 Ford Puma ST
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Engine noise (yes, even the fake ones) Handling Grip Design Performance Brakes Boot space Physical AC controls Steering | Very firm ride So dark inside Brakes grabby when cold Engine drone could be weary on a long trip |
What’s In The 2024 Ford Puma Range?
New Zealand gets access to just two Puma models, the $40,990 ST Line and the $47,990 ST (tested).
While both models are powered by a one-litre, three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, the base ST Line has an output of 92kW of power, and 210Nm of torque, compared to the ST that manages 125kW and 248Nm.
Both models run a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission (DCT), with the ST Line rated at 5.3L/100km for fuel consumption and the ST rated at 5.7L/100km.
2024 Ford Puma Colour Range
You get to choose from 6 colours for your Puma ST, all at no additional cost – good on you, Ford!
- Frozen White
- Desert Island Blue
- Agate Black
- Solar Silver
- Cactus Grey
- Rapid Red
For a full list of specs and options available for the Ford Puma ST, head on over to Ford New Zealand’s website.
How Does The 2024 Ford Puma ST Compare To Its Competition?
With no Hyundai Kona N yet available, I’ve included the much tamer Kona N Line for comparison although the Puma is smaller than both the Niro and Kona.
I’ve tried to only compare small or compact performance-orientated SUVs within $20K of the Puma ST for this table, and pickings seem slim. There are plenty of performance SUVs above the $60K mark, however.
| Make/ Model | Engine | Power/ Torque kW/Nm | Seats | Fuel L/100km | Towing Capacity | Boot Space, litres | Price |
| Kia Niro GT Line HEV (FWD) | 1.6-litre, 4-cylinder petrol mild hybrid | 104/265 | 5 | 4.4 | 600/1,300 | 451 | $59,990 |
| Hyundai Kona N Line Active (FWD) | 2.0-litre, 4-cylinder petrol | 110/180 | 5 | 7.3 | 600/1,300 | 407 | $49,990 |
| Ford Puma ST (FWD) | 1.0-litre, 3-cylinder, turbocharged petrol, mild hybrid | 125/248 | 5 | 5.7 | 665/900 | 456 | $47,990 |
Please note that DriveLife does its best to ensure the information above is correct at the time of publication, however, prices, specifications and models can change over time. Please bear that in mind when comparing models in the comparison table.
First Impressions Of The 2024 Ford Puma ST
You’ve got to hand it to Ford; while our roads are awash with similar-looking SUVs, the Puma is one of those rare designs where you can always tell if it’s a Puma if it’s driving towards you. That’s not easy, and what would be easy to achieve this is to make the Puma weird-looking so it really stands out on the road.
Thankfully, Ford has not done that, and the new Puma has a design that is pleasing to the eye. Just the right proportions, the right lines in the right places, awesome wheels – it’s a sum of the parts experience and it works.
Around the back of the car, a nice nod to early hot hatches is the dual exhausts that only come out on one side of the car, bucking the current trend of one on each side. It looks good, but you’ve got to wonder why Ford made the exhaust so big, when there’s a puny 1-litre engine under the bonnet. Sure, there’s a turbo as well, but they look too big for the engine size. Done for looks? Probably, and I’m fine with that.
What’s The Interior Like In The 2024 Ford Puma ST?
Every single passenger’s immediate impression of the interior was having to climb over the extremely high seat bolsters. Another nod to performance cars having bolsters that tall – and they sure do hold you in place – but it feels like there’s no graceful way to enter or exit the Puma ST – you sort of just fall into the seat as best you can, and climb out, hoping no one is looking at you contorting to weird angles on exiting the car. The front seats are one-piece units, and have “Ford Performance” embroidered onto them.
The back seats are standard Puma, so there’s no extra bolsters or padding for your rear-seat passengers, they just have to hold on tight.
Those front seats have manual cushion length adjustment, and the seats have no power adjustment, other than 4-way electric lumbar adjust for both front seats. They also have a lever to adjust the height of the front of the seat, something we don’t often see. I’ve got to say, I managed to get a perfect seats/pedals/steering wheel driving position in the Puma ST, something that was appreciated after doing over 1,000km in a week in the car.
Those front seats have 3-stage heating, while the steering wheel has just on/off heating, and that’s it. Both were appreciated in the almost-freezing temperatures of my week with the car. I realise we’ve talked exclusively about the seats so far, but they really are a highlight of the interior.
In front, there’s a small centre infotainment screen, almost looking antiquated in these days of single, massive curved screens. Still, it does the job with acceptable clarity and reasonable speed between screens. The dash is adorned with fake carbon fibre, but it doesn’t look overdone or tacky, so breathe easy.
More sportiness can be found with the red stitching that adorns the doors, seats, steering wheel and handbrake gaiter. While the entire interior is filled with black, that red stitching does give a little lift to the darkness.
At the front of the centre console you’ll find a single USB-A port, and a 12-volt socket. Behind the gear shifter are Ford’s signature illuminated cupholders; geeky, yes, but also practical as well as looking quite cool at nighttime. At the rear of the centre console is a tiny cubby, but at least it’s deep.
One huge bonus the Puma ST has over some of its rivals is the AC controls; they are all knobs and buttons, and nothing is controlled by the centre screen. Sadly this is becoming a rarity, and yet it’s so easy – and less distracting – to control the car’s AC this way than having to look at a screen. Sigh.
It’s nice to find an old-school manual handbrake in the Puma, it’s been some time since I last saw one in a new car. Does this mean Ford expects owners to use the handbrake for purposes other than holding the car when parked? Well, I can neither confirm nor deny that it works well for both uses.
Rear-seat passengers are going to find it a little snug back there, not helped by the one-piece front seats. Some of the feeling of snugness is just a feeling, although legroom and headroom are average for this class of SUV.
On the other hand, the electric tailgate opens to show a surprisingly spacious boot. It’s deep, too, and then you lift the false floor cover and find yet more space down there to store stuff. In the boot area is another 12-volt socket to plug stuff into. The seats fold down in a 60/40 split, but unfortunately for some, don’t fold down anywhere near flat to the floor.
What’s The 2024 Ford Puma ST Like To Drive?
Before starting the Puma ST – since that’s a highlight of this car – you get to grab a hold of that chunky, flat-bottom perforated leather steering wheel. It’s just the right size and comes complete with a nice little ST badge on it. It also has a red ST button that will put the car into ST mode instantly, in case you need some performance right now. On the other spoke is the Drive Modes button; weirdly, if you are in ST mode and then hit the Drive Modes button to switch it to something else, the next mode is always ‘Slippery’, and that felt wrong. The other modes after Slippery are Normal, then Eco. With so much torque, it’s all too easy to drive the Puma ST around in Eco mode all day long.
To start the car, you get to press a red ‘Start’ button – something we don’t always see on performance cars, even those costing three times as much as this Puma. Yes, a red Start button is a small thing, but with cars like this it’s always about the total driving experience, and starting the car is part of that.
Then that tiny 1.0-litre, 3-cylinder engine roars into life. You would not think a 1.0-litre engine could roar, but it sure does. Okay, surely some of that engine noise is fake, but it’s done so well, we forgive Ford for that. Some fake engine noises are cringe-worthy, but not so on the Puma ST – it sounds glorious, and I never tired of that noise. It sounds like only a 3-cylinder turbo engine could, but (with fake noises) is amped up to a level that is audible excellence.
While you might get tired of endless exhaust drone on a long trip, at 100km/h on the motorway, all is nicely quiet, with just a slight hum coming from under the bonnet and from the speakers – until you put your foot down to pass slower traffic. At 100km/h, the engine is turning over at 2,000rpm and will be in 7th gear. While that’s a high rpm reading for many modern cars, we need to keep in mind that it’s just 999cc in size, so it needs to keep those revs up some to avoid bogging down.
On first driving the car with cold brakes, they are pretty touchy, so smooth stops are not easy. This does improve once they are warmed up, but they are never perfect in this sense. On the other hand, there’s little brake fade – if any – after repeated emergency stops or some spirited driving. The brakes are up to the task in this performance SUV. Pedal feel is excellent; Ford says that, “Puma ST’s brake booster is tuned for modulation, feel and feedback that supports performance driving” and they have achieved that perfectly.
Second impressions on driving the Puma ST? This car rides hard. It jiggles and bumps its way over irregular road surfaces. I loved driving the Puma ST, but I can imagine that the ride would get a bit too much on a long trip. I took the Puma ST to Hawera to work on our project car, a 300km drive each way. Thankfully, most of the highways for that trip are relatively smooth, but on getting out of the Puma ST and into a ‘normal’ car, the change felt like I was in a Rolls-Royce.
For the car’s handling and suspension, the car uses a rear suspension twist-beam rated at 2,000 Nm/deg torsional stiffness – an increase of more than 50 per cent compared to the standard Puma – with a 28 mm anti-roll bar integrated into the U section and a 24 mm front anti-roll bar.
There’s also Ford’s patented force vectoring springs that “also improve the Puma ST’s stability, agility and responsiveness. The non-uniform, non-interchangeable, directionally-wound springs apply vectoring forces to the rear suspension and enable cornering forces to travel directly into the spring, for increased lateral stiffness.”
Ford claims that this advanced spring technology is combined with Hitachi twin-tube frequency-reactive dampers at the front and rear, delivering the stiffness needed for enhanced body control alongside the compliance to isolate smaller road imperfections for high-speed refinement.
That’s all very nice, but does it work? Hell, yes! While I absolutely love the Ford Fiesta ST and, like many, cried a tear when it was discontinued, the Puma ST is almost as good as that awesome model in the handling department. Rock-hard suspension aside, this car can really hustle it around the bends, and you are left struggling to believe it’s front-wheel drive. Grip, handling, steering weight and feel are all outstanding. Still not quite as good as the smaller, lower and lighter Fiesta ST, but as a replacement, bloody amazing. I took the Puma ST on a 7km winding road with 2/3/4th gear corners and was blown away by how well it does in the bends. After driving that road, I drove back again, just to make sure the car did as well as I felt it did. All for the sake of good reporting, of course.
A couple of things came out of that return drive; the steering is very quick, as the Puma ST has an 11.4:1 steering ratio – almost 25 per cent faster than the standard Puma. The ST model uses a combination of ST-specification front knuckles, steering arm and steering rack gearing, for heightened response during turn-in compared to the standard Puma. The Puma ST definitely turns in well, and the steering is very quick indeed.
My second observation was the rev-matching. You’ll get nice blips of the engine through the gears and it doesn’t have to be in ST mode for this to happen – even in Normal drive mode, rev-matching occurs. When using the Puma ST as a commuter, this adds a bit of a highlight to that boring daily drive.
On that same road, I stuck the car into manual mode and used the paddles to change gears. After driving that road, who would believe you that this engine is an entire 1-litre? Three cylinders? It seems impossible as regardless of the fake engine noises, this little engine can haul. The engine is so keen to rev out to its redline as quickly as possible and feels a bit old-school and raw, but in a good way. Sure, there’s mild-hybrid assistance, but still – the performance is incredible. Add in those awesome sounds, and you have a car that’s worthy of the ST badge. At the top end, the engine does run out of puff, but we accept that since it’s just 1,000cc in size.
The transmission in the 2024 Ford Puma ST is a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission (DCT). It’s certainly up to the same level as the rest of the car, although being a DCT, still suffers from some jerkiness at low speeds, especially (for example) backing up a slight slope. However, on the move and especially when needed, changes are quick and efficient.
For the driver, there are some new gauges in the ST; you get to select through different dashboard options of items to display and two of these are Performance Gauges, and Performance Details. Performance Gauges shows you things like the engine’s oil temperature, oil pressure, and turbo boost. If you switch to Performance Details, it’s pretty much the same but the readings are in bars instead of round gauges. The dashboard itself is standard current Ford, super clean and clear, with a few colour options to choose from.
But things are not perfect in Puma ST land, as there are some quirks and things that just aren’t right. Three-quarter visibility is terrible at best, and there’s no 360-degree camera to help you out when parking (there is a reversing camera, of course). On coarse-chip seal, the tyres are very noisy, and the seats are reasonably firm – meaning after our 4-hour drive to Hawera, numb-butt syndrome was evident.
Those things are balanced out with some positives that aren’t related to the ST-side of things, like better than expected audio quality, headlights that penetrate deep into the night, low wind noise levels, and all windows being fully automatic up/down. The car’s SatNav works well and includes driving instructions that are shown on the dashboard. The Puma ST is fitted with automatic parking, and it works very well for either angle or parallel parking, and also has a function to get you out of a tight parking spot.
With just 999cc and 3 cylinders to feed – as well as some hybrid assist – you’d likely feel that the Puma ST is going to be excellent on 95-octane gas (and it does need 95 or higher). While Ford suggests the car should return 5.7L/100km, after travelling 1,200km in the car we managed 7.5L/100km, and that included 600km of open-road driving. But then you factor in the eagerness of that little motor to be driven hard, the result we got is completely understandable.
2024 Ford Puma ST – Specifications
| Vehicle Type | Small, 5-door performance SUV |
| Starting Price | $47,990 |
| Price as Tested | $47,990 |
| Engine | 1.0-litre, 3-cylinder turbocharged ‘EcoBoost’ with 48-volt mild hybrid assist (MHEV) |
| Power, Torque kW/Nm | 118/248 |
| Transmission | 7-speed dual-clutch automatic (DCT0 |
| Spare Wheel | Tyre repair kit only |
| Kerb Weight, Kg | 1,394 |
| Length x Width x Height mm | 4,226×1,930×1,805 |
| Boot Space / Cargo Capacity, Litres (seats up/seats down) | 456/1,216 |
| Fuel tank capacity, litres | 42 |
| Fuel Economy, L/100km | Advertised Spec – Combined – 5.7 Real-World Test – Combined – 7.5 Low Usage: <6 / Medium Usage 6-12 / High Usage 12+ |
| Towing Capacity Kg, unbraked/braked | 665/900 |
| Turning circle metres | 10.5 Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+ |
| Warranty | 5 years, unlimited kilometres |
| Safety information | ANCAP Rating – 5 stars – Link Rightcar.govt.nz – 5 Stars – QEB946 |
Have you enjoyed this review? Be sure to join our monthly email newsletter list so you don’t miss a single car review!
