Ford Kuga SUV - Reliability & safety

The old Kuga was thought to be durable, although it always lacked the reputation for reliability held by its Japanese rivals. While this latest model remains unproven, it shares its powertrains with the latest Focus and Mondeo, with Ford hoping it will improve their reliability rankings. 

Like other models in the range, Ford has fitted the latest Kuga a vast array of standard safety technology, earning it a five-star rating from Euro NCAP. 

Ford Kuga reliability

The Ford Kuga is too new to feature in our 2020 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, but the previous model scored quite well; it placed 44th out of the top 100 cars ranked, and only 8.5% of buyers told us about a fault in the first year of ownership. However, Ford came a meagre 24th out of 30 brands in our manufacturer list. With the new Focus, Puma and Kuga now all on sale, we expect Ford to climb up the rankings in the next couple of years.

Safety

Independent testers Euro NCAP put the Kuga through its paces before it even went on sale, and it passed with flying colours. Receiving a five-star score, the Kuga scored 92% for adult safety, 86% for child safety, 82% for pedestrian protection and 73% for the array of safety kit on board.

Standard safety features include lane-keeping assist, hill-start assist, auto emergency braking and intelligent speed assist. A Driver Assistance pack costs £1,000 and adds kit such as blind-spot monitoring, traffic sign recognition and front and rear cameras.