New Ford Puma: the UK’s best-selling car of 2023 gets an update

Perhaps buoyed by its sales success, Ford has made its best-selling car even happier than before. Welcome to the excitable new Ford Puma. Look how happy it is!

Should be, too, considering Ford shifted 49,951 versions of its Fiesta-based crossover in the UK in 2023 alone. And it’s started 2024 strongly too, second only to the Kia Sportage in the sales charts. A suite of targeted updates should ensure it retakes top spot soon enough.

Chief among which is that new face. There’s a new headlight design across the entire range (with the option of matrix LED items), while the Titanium, ST-Line and ST-Line X trims get a redesigned front bumper arrangement.

There are similarly small tweaks across the lower side trims and lower part of the rear bumper, but there’s nothing that radically changes how it looks. Which is good, because it looks… good.

Instead Ford has poured effort into updating the Puma’s interior, here with a new “sports car-style” cockpit that brings a lot of screen real estate. There’s a new steering wheel, a customisable 12.8in digital instrument display for the driver (bigger), and a further high-def 12in centre touchscreen (also bigger) that controls everything including the maps, infotainment and climate and seat heating.

The ‘SYNC 4’ connectivity is apparently twice as fast as SYNC 3, and the new 5G Puma gets voice recognition and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto functionality too.

Alexa’s built in, of course, while there’s a tonne of driver assist including adaptive cruise control, lane centring, a 360-degree surround-view camera, plus ‘predictive speed’ and ‘reverse brake’ assistance. That’s a lot of help.

The range is also helped by a mild hybrid setup, powered by variations of Ford’s 1.0-litre EcoBoost petrol three-pot in either 123bhp or 153bhp guises.

Then there's the ST Powershift – not to be confused with the full fat Puma ST – with 166bhp and a 0-62mph time of 7.4s. That’s also the heaviest version of the new Puma, weighing in at 1,390kg. The others are lighter.

Prices start from £25,790, and Ford tells us the first fully-electric Puma, called the ‘Gen-E’, will make its worldwide debut later this year.