Ford Puma Coupe
Coupes are fashion items. They are launched with fanfare, are bought by the style-conscious and, once they’re a few years old, are ignored like last year’s designer clothes. Typically, they soldier on in the showroom, like unwanted garments on the rack marked “sale,” before dying a quiet death. Two short-lived coupes recently died in Europe, largely unnoticed the Opel Calibra and the Ford Probe.
Coupes make no sense. They are invariably sedan-based, and rarely go faster or handle better than the sedans they are based on. Yet they cost more both to buy and insure and they are less roomy and less practical than their four-door equivalents.
The makers are defying logic. It is impossible to make a logical case for buying any coupe. And yet, in Europe at any rate, carmakers are flooding the market with new models. (There’s a host of reasons but it mainly comes down to people’s wanting “individual” cars, and the rapid reduction of production costs that make coupes cost-effective to make.)
The latest is the Ford Puma Coupe. It is based on the Fiesta, Ford’s inoffensive and sensible little runabout, but wears a much more aggressive and eye-catching set of clothes. Unlike most coupes, this two-door is brisker than its donor vehicle it uses a new 1.7-liter Ford engine that not only goes well but sounds musical.
Ford studied the exhaust note of a four-cylinder Alfa Romeo engine, which they judged the most mellifluous in the motor industry, and tried to match its melody. Prod the right pedal hard, and there’s a veritable orchestra of growls and barks and rasps coming from the tailpipe. There’s also a pleasing absence of groans and whines, for the new Ford engine is a refined unit unlike most old Ford four-cylinder engines that, far from being orchestral, sounded like a bag of bolts.
Ford has not only made big strides in its engine refinement but, more than any other European carmaker, it has also made huge gains in ride and handling. It needed to. The Ford Puma Coupe as with the Fiesta rides broken British blacktop and French cobblestones with decorum. The springs suppress the bumps, without upsetting the stability of the body, and the little Ford just powers serenely on, like a liner dealing with a minor ocean swell. And it handles high-speed smooth roads with almost race-car agility.
It really is a lot of fun to drive, helped by pleasingly linear steering and a good gearshift. It doesn’t have quite the slingshot acceleration of the best Peugeot GTi models, nor quite the wrist-flick-accurate steering response of the little sporty Peugeots. But it is no less fun to drive and a good deal less frenzied. The Ford Puma Coupe doubles as a relaxing mode of transport, when you’re not in the mood for daredevil driving.
The cabin is very Fiesta-like, which means it’s good. There is the unusual scooped-out dash in front of the passenger, to give extra knee room. The major change is the silver-foil lining of the dashboard, to differentiate it from the Fiesta’s gray plastic. It looks as though, in a few years, it would peel off, like poor quality house paint in the sun. Ford insists that it will last as long as the rest of the car. The gear knob is machined aluminum, a nice touch.
Minimal Seating
Like most two-door cars, there are really only two seats. Sure, there are a couple of exiguous rear chairs, fine for children and for those adults of a masochistic disposition, but they are more useful for carrying odds and ends than people. The trunk is small, too. So it’s not much of a carry-all, the Ford Puma Coupe. Rather, it’s a fun-to-drive, brisk sports car. It’s one coupe that serves up more driving entertainment than its sedan equivalent, a car that does deliver sports car spirit rather than merely sports car pretensions.
Not that it’s free from some pretension. The Steve McQueen Puma TV ad, doing the rounds in Europe, has attracted loads of attention. The wonders of modern computer-generated imagery has brought him back to life, standing alongside a new Ford Puma Coupe even driving it.
The parallels between the macho Mustang that McQueen drove in “Bullitt” and the rather dainty little Ford Puma Coupe are also, it must be said, rather far-fetched.
Mind you, there’s nothing new in the use of bizarre or over-the-top images for promoting a product that’s all about emotion, rather than common sense. That’s the fashion business for you.
