FORD PUMA ST HYBRID

New automatic version of hot crossover costs just £10 more-but there's a catch...

- STEVE CROPLEY

If you look at it in a certain way, choosing the new mild-hybrid version of Ford's popular Puma ST sport crossover instead of the original pure-petrol model will cost you precisely a tenner.

Deciding between that pure petrol car (with a six-speed manual gearbox) and the new MHEV one (with a seven-speed automatic) may therefore seem a straightforward decision: use less fuel and emit less CO₂ for a tiny extra outlay. But it's nowhere near that simple.

The Puma ST's petrol-manual powertrain is the familiar 198bhp 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo setup that we all know and admire from the now-departed Fiesta ST. It returns a combined 42.8mpg on the WLTP test cycle, emits 149g/km of CO2 and gives the car a decent 0-62mph sprint time of 6.7sec.