Ford Puma's.. talk to me

I love em, my mate used to have one and I embarrassed more than several Impreza/Porsche owners down the back lanes round here. They're not amazingly quick in a straight line, but you just don't have to slow down.

I have never been a fan of them,but only because I never paid them much attention.However this thread is one of the main reasons I like Retro Rides so much as a forum.All it takes is one person to say "love for the ........." or "Ford Puma talk to me" and you are blessed with a deluge of oppinions and pics,affordable price guides and photoshops.All of which suddenly make a car that I never cared for (for no particular reason) REALLY COOL.All of a sudden people who read this thread who like me,had no prior Puma knowledge will either feel the love for the Puma for the 1st time or not.The ones that do will hopefully go out and find these alleged bargains and give them new love and lives.I live in New Zealand but used to live in Aylasbury,Buckinghamshire.So Euro Fords are limited to Mondeo,Fiesta and Focus,no Pumas or Cougars here.

Any how thats my 2 cents worth,not really about the Puma but on how the amount of good a site like this does for petrolheads and potentially forgotten cars.

Yep. The tail of the hatch is angled slightly downwards towards the bottom of the rear screen. Water collects against the centre of the screen, then when you lift the hatch it runs along the joint to the edges of the hatch and straight into the boot. To avoid this you have to lift the hatch in two stages - up about a foot to allow the water to run off down the gutters at the sides of the hatch aperture, then all the way up.

I think I mentioned in the last Puma thread that I had one of the very first batch of Pumas in the country (August 1997). It was a fantastic car but had 2 annoying problems.

It had a lot of negative camber on the front wheels which gave it excellent cornering but the tyres would be bald on the inner edges after 5000 miles. I believe this was fixed by a geometry change very early on in production.

The other problem was the front brakes, which originally used the same 239mm discs as the RS Turbo Fiesta, and had exactly the same tendency to warp as they did on the RS Turbo. The discs were changed to 258mm Focus units (with the associated longer caliper mounts) mid-2000. Ideally you would go for one of these later cars, but cars with the smaller discs can be upgraded if you can get the discs and caliper mounts from a later Puma or Fiesta Zetec S (also found on most 2002-on Fiestas/Fusions).

The 'ultimate' brake upgrade route for these cars though was to use the Focus ST170 280mm discs with Mk3 Mondeo calipers and mounts (which are a tight fit behind the original 15" alloys and need a bit of grinding), or later on using the Fiesta ST 280mm discs, calipers and mounts.