Ford Kuga interior
The Ford Kuga is spacious for passengers, but it won’t have you weak at the knees with its interior quality, nor its infotainment system.
Style
The Ford Kuga has a relatively simple interior design, with useful buttons for the air-con behind the gear lever and plenty of buttons for other functions on the steering wheel. The infotainment screen is the most prominent feature, just like in the Ford Focus – which has a very similar interior.
Quality is pretty good – the materials here are just as good as in a VW Tiguan or Skoda Karoq, yet the dark colours mean it just doesn’t feel quite as upmarket. The build quality is just as good as well, so you can’t feel too short-changed.
There are some scratchy plastics in places, and some things like the storage cubbies feel slightly flimsy. But the Kuga is good value, so we can forgive it to some extent.
Entry-level Kugas get cloth seats as standard, but next rung up Titanium gets sports seats in cloth instead. ST-Line gets a more premium cloth on their red-stitched seats and finally, luxury trim Vignale has a full leather set.
Fords have come on leaps and bounds inside in recent years, but the Kuga still feels slightly lower-rent inside than a Skoda Kodiaq or Mazda CX-5.
- Cash
- £25,963
- Monthly
- £303*
- Used
- £23,000
Infotainment
Every Ford Kuga comes with an 8-inch infotainment system, which comes with voice recognition technology, built-in sat-nav and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Wireless charging for your smartphone is standard too, which is great.
While the system’s touchscreen is responsive and bright, the on-screen graphics aren’t quite as modern-looking as in, say, a Skoda, and the general menu structure isn’t quite as intuitive, either. The smartphone-based interfaces work brilliantly here though.
You don’t get any physical shortcut buttons to help you switch from one feature to another, but at least there’s a normal volume dial for the stereo – which is absent in some new SUVS – and an on-screen home button to rescue you if you get lost in some of the Focus’ more obscure menus.
It’s relatively easy to input an address into the sat-nav system but you have to go back to the main menu to add a waypoint to your route. The maps respond nice and quickly when you pinch or swipe and you can ask it to calculate another route at any time if you spot heavy traffic up ahead. Even so, there’s phone mirroring if you don’t get on with it.
Titanium trim gets a 4.3-inch colour instrument cluster screen for clearer driving information on the move, and the PHEV model gets a 6.5-inch version. Vignale and ST-Line cars, though, come with a full 12.3-inch digital driver’s display. It’s clear and customisable, but not quite as sharp as the one in a Kodiaq.
As standard, you get Ford’s basic six-speaker sound system but from second-rung Titanium, you’re treated to an upgraded B&O system as standard, which sounds superb, although the tweeter covers in the rear doors feel really poor-quality.
- Cash
- £25,963
- Monthly
- £303*
- Used
- £23,000
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*Please contact the dealer for a personalised quote, including terms and conditions. Quote is subject to dealer requirements, including status and availability. Illustrations are based on personal contract hire, 9 month upfront fee, 48 month term and 8000 miles annually, VAT included.