Ford Puma - Practicality, comfort and boot space

A lot of work has gone into ensuring the Ford Puma combines its athletic low stance with plenty of practicality and comfort. From the driver’s seat, the links to the Fiesta are clear, although you do sit slightly higher from the ground and get a slightly better view as a result.  

The driving position feels sportier than most rivals due to good seat bolsters and a chunky steering wheel, while there’s a great deal of adjustment in the seat and steering wheel, a typical Ford trait.

Size

The Puma is one of the smaller options in the supermini-sized SUV class. It measures 4,186mm in length (4,226mm for the ST), 1,805mm wide and stands 1,536mm tall. By comparison, the Peugeot 2008 and Mazda CX-30 are 114mm and 209mm longer, respectively.

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Leg room, head room & passenger space

The Puma manages to maintain decent passenger space, despite its sloping roofline. Room up front is very good, while the rear bench is an acceptable size. 

Passenger space in the rear is compromised when compared with a Renault Captur or Volkswagen T-Cross, because both these rivals have a handy sliding rear bench which allows you to prioritise rear leg room at the expense of overall boot space.

To get around this, those in the back of the Puma sit higher up than those in the front, which means your legs drop straight down into the footwell rather than out under the seat in front. It’s a packaging trick that effectively creates more leg room without making the car longer. It works, and means taller folk will fit (unlike the Vauxhall Mokka), but it isn’t as comfortable over a longer journey as a Renault Captur, which affords people more room to stretch out.

As with most rivals in this class, two ISOFIX points are mounted to the outer positions of the rear seats.

Boot

A boot of 456 litres is on par with competitors in this class, and there’s virtually no lip to get over, so awkward items shouldn’t be too tricky to load. In comparison, the Peugeot 2008 offers 434 litres of boot space and the Renault Captur 12 litres less than that, although the Captur has an ace up its sleeve in the form of a sliding rear bench seat. When the bench is pushed all the way forward, it frees up a 536-litre capacity.

One area where Ford has been rather clever is in the Puma‘s adjustable boot floor with the so-called ‘Megabox’ hidden storage area beneath. It’s a 68-litre plastic compartment with a drain plug at the bottom, making it – in our experience – a handy spot for storing muddy boots that’s easily washed out afterwards. Ford also claims that using the MegaBox allows you to stand a golf bag upright in the Puma’s boot.

Towing

Both the 123bhp and 153bhp versions of the 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine can tow a very small caravan or trailer weighing up to 1100kg. That’s at the lower end of the scale, meaning those after more serious pulling power must go for the four-wheel drive ‘4Motion’ VW T-Roc, which can tow up to 1,700kg in both 2.0-litre petrol and diesel forms.