Five-star safety for Ford Puma

The Ford Puma has been awarded a maximum five-star rating by independent auto safety organisation ANCAP, ahead of the all-new small SUV’s Australian release late this month.

ANCAP said the Ford Puma performed well in almost all key areas of crash and collision-avoidance testing. However, as is often the case with European models, it did not test the vehicle locally and instead extrapolated data from tests conducted by its Euro NCAP affiliate in 2019.

That means that although all Ford Puma variants come with advanced safety technologies and a maximum five-star ANCAP rating, the vehicle was not measured against more stringent criteria introduced by NCAP in 2020.

This year’s stricter NCAP test regime aims to more closely reflect real-world conditions, via an upgraded frontal offset test that simulates a collision with an oncoming vehicle using a mobile progressive deformable barrier, assessment of countermeasures against injuries in far-side impacts and testing of autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems in scenarios such as when turning across the path of an oncoming vehicle.

So far only the new Isuzu D-MAX ute and Toyota Yaris hatch have been assessed against the more stringent 2020 testing process, both scoring five stars, although ANCAP said the Ford Puma scored well across each of the four key areas of assessment against 2019 criteria.

These included Adult Occupant Protection (94%), Child Occupant Protection (86%), Vulnerable Road User Protection (77%) and Safety Assist (74%).

However, ANCAP rated protection of the driver’s chest as ‘marginal’ in the frontal offset test and said the Puma's bonnet provided only ‘good’ to ‘marginal’ protection for pedestrians, after the rear of the bonnet and windscreen produced ‘weak’ and ‘poor’ results in testing.

ANCAP also said the Puma’s lane support system “does not intervene in more critical emergency lane keeping (ELK) scenarios and overall performance” and therefore it lost points in the Safety Assist category.

“In both the side impact and oblique pole tests, protection of all critical body regions was 'good' and the Puma scored full points in both of these tests,” said ANCAP director of communications and advocacy, Rhianne Robson.

“In terms of active safety, the Puma’s autonomous emergency braking system is able to detect pedestrians and cyclists as well as other vehicles, and in these tests the system’s overall performance was rated as 'good' with collisions avoided or mitigated in most scenarios.

“Lane keep assist functionality also scored well, with the Puma able to detect dashed and solid line markings as well as the road edge, and provide assistance to the driver to help avoid the vehicle straying from its intended lane or running off-road.”

All Ford Puma variants come standard with AEB including pedestrian and cyclist detection, plus lane keep assist, lane departure warning, traffic sign recognition, a driver impairment monitor, tyre pressure monitoring, six airbags and rear parking sensors.

Optional across the range is a Park Package that adds blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control with stop/go and lane-centring, active park assist and front parking sensors.

The new Ford Puma is now on sale priced from $29,990 plus on-road costs. However, Ford Australia is softening the blow of price hikes over the model it replaces – the unloved Ford EcoSport, which was priced from $22,790 – by sweetening the Puma deal with drive-away prices and discounts of up to $1000 for current Ford owners who test drive and buy before the end of October.

A hotter Ford Puma ST will be revealed later today in Europe, but it won’t be sold in Australia because it is manual-only.