This cool cat fails to make us all go wild

Published on 27 September, 2020

The new Ford Puma is a very tasteful small SUV/crossover

Overview

My daughter thought it was pretty cool and liked the fact that its Frozen White colour matched both of our Baby Spice-style runners.

Aneta, my style and coffee guru at Insomnia in Dublin's Navan Road, thought it had a bit of a Porsche look about it. She also said my wife looked rather like a princess in it.

Hmm, my wife might also act like one when she sends me in for our coffees before we take the dogs to Phoenix Park for a walk.

Certainly, the new Ford Puma turns heads and packs a lot of attitude into a relatively compact length.

It looks bigger than it is and makes use of every nook and cranny to boost its carrying ability, which is especially enhanced by a deep, drainable space under the false floor in the load area.

The company likes to make the point that the Megabox could be used for carrying a set of golf clubs upright, or large potted plants. Of course, it really is just the reworking of the space where the spare tyre used to be. An issue that has generated a lot of heat with readers. For Ford, and especially the Puma, that ship has long sailed.

There is an awful lot to like about the new Puma, as a very tasteful small SUV/crossover. I had been really looking forward to a decent test of it since the car was launched just a few weeks before the country went into the March lockdown and a scheduled drive in April was cancelled.

The test car was the Ford Puma ST-Line X with the mild hybrid 1.0-litre Ecoboost 125PS engine. There was a very flexible six-speed manual box and it had emissions of 127g/km CO2 and claims a very optimistic 5.6l/100km.

The entry price for the Puma is €24,835, with the ST-Line X beginning at €27,917. However, the additional options on the test model - including hands-free tailgate, LED headlamps and a brilliant driver assistance pack which did perfect hands-off parking that amazed my daughter - put on another €3,400.

I liked the way the car drove and its overall pzazz. Even in its standard Titanium specification, it is well stocked with good equipment. I think the seven-speed automatic transmission that is now available is a good option, but maybe I'm just getting a bit lazy.

The Puma is based on the same platform as the Fiesta, which is one of the best driving cars on the market, and the dynamics seem to be even better with this new crossover. It definitely out-steers and thrills most of the opposition. I like it a lot and it will do well, but there is a caveat.

As I said earlier, I'd been looking forward to the test drive. I thought the Puma might just be the car for my wife. I picked it up on the Monday after we had spent Friday night at the Shelbourne in Dublin for our wedding anniversary. Its colour would have made a great bridal car.

Still happy from our night away and a great dinner in The Ivy, I thought I was on to a winner with the Puma and got my wife to sit behind the wheel. It was just as well I hadn't got carried away and made a crazily generous gift.

She could understand the possibilities of the car but hated the driving position.

While I could sit well back while driving, her much smaller size meant that she would be very cramped up front, way too close to the sculpted roof and hemmed in against the dashboard.

If she used the vanity mirror it would have actually touched her nose. Her visibility to the side was also very compromised under the sloping A pillar.

A pity. Never mind, the search goes on. There will be many more anniversaries. Speaking of which, I was very taken with comedian John Bishop's description of the annual celebration with his wife of 27 years. Every year she gets into her original wedding dress and they have a glass or two. Ouch. Already, just a year later, my wedding waistcoat was feeling a bit tight as we toasted each other over the champagne afternoon tea in the Shelbourne.

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New restrictions in Dublin have put the brakes on our trips into the Wicklow mountains and I'm feeling hemmed in. Getting a bit of the wanderlust. This was going to be a year for travel. A transatlantic voyage, time in Sicily, Cornwall and a sleeper train ride from London to Scotland had all been on the agenda after a recent significant birthday. Alas, not yet.

However, there is another place that might be on the agenda - Kenya, from where the great journalist and broadcaster Aidan Hartley now farms and writes the Wild Life column for The Spectator.

I have cut out his column from August 29 which, after describing how it was to return home after enforced lockdown in London and see his 95-year old mother again, ends: "After a time at home on the farm, we headed for my mother's house on the north coast. We have spent our days swimming and surfing. One morning, a pod of dolphins swam all around us in the water, very relaxed, with babies nuzzling their mothers. They splashed around and came so close I thought about the absurdities of social distancing.

"There are no tourists here at all, which is a tragedy for many local people. Kenya needs you back, readers. The beaches are empty. The national parks are empty. The people are friendly, sensible - and not hysterical. This year almost nobody saw the great wildebeest migration across the Maasai Mara. Think of what a wonderful chance this could be to see East Africa."

I looked up how far it is from Dublin to Nairobi. It's just short of 11,000 kilometres. That's real motoring. A proper road trip. And I'm tempted.