Ford New Cars: Range Prices, the Grant Maths and the Tax Lines

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The Ford Puma was the best-selling car in Britain in 2025 on 55,488 registrations, and at £27,145 on the road it is also the cheapest new Ford on sale. That figure is Ford’s own recommended on-the-road price for a Titanium with the 1.0-litre EcoBoost mild hybrid, 125PS and a six-speed manual gearbox, taken from the customer price list Ford dates 5 August 2026. Every number below comes from Ford’s own published documents or from the Government’s, read on 13 November 2026.

The cheaper car in the showroom is the electric one, which is not the usual direction of travel. A Puma Gen-E Select lists at £29,995 on the road, and the Gen-E is one of only 21 cars in the top band of the Electric Car Grant, worth £3,750. The seller applies that as a discount on the purchase price rather than the buyer claiming it back, so the Gen-E goes out of the door at roughly £26,245 — about £900 below the petrol Puma — with 259 miles of WLTP range, 46.8kWh of usable battery and a first-year tax bill of £10 against £455.

One thing belongs up here because it changes what a reader is shopping for. Ford no longer sells a small cheap car. The Fiesta went first, and Ford’s own Focus page now answers the question in its own words: “Yes – we’ve discontinued the Ford Focus® as a new model”. Eight Ford car ranges still have a live UK price list, the cheapest of them is a crossover, and nothing in the range starts with a two in front of five figures.

Eight price lists, and what each range opens at

Ford is unusual among volume marques in publishing a proper customer price list for every range: a dated PDF giving each derivative’s basic price, the VAT on it, the recommended on-the-road figure, carbon dioxide output, the vehicle excise duty band and the monthly company car tax at both rates. No configurator, no login. Eight of those documents were readable on 13 November 2026 and this is where each range starts and stops.

The Puma list, effective 5 August 2026, runs thirteen derivatives from the £27,145 Titanium manual at 122g/km to an ST Edition at £35,500 and 135g/km, all of them the 1.0-litre EcoBoost mild hybrid in 125PS, 155PS or 170PS form. The Puma Gen-E list carries the same 5 August date and four trims: Select at £29,995 and 259 miles, Premium and Black Edition at £31,995, and a BlueCruise Edition at £34,295, each with 168PS, 290Nm and 0-62mph in 8.0 seconds.

The Kuga was repriced on 11 September 2026 and is the range’s mixed-fuel car: a 1.5 EcoBoost Titanium manual at £33,335 and 145g/km, full hybrids from £38,725, plug-in hybrids from £39,320 at 21g/km, and a BlueCruise Edition all-wheel-drive hybrid at £44,330. Explorer and Capri share the same 1 April 2026 date and the same mechanical menu — a 58kWh car at 190PS, a 79kWh extended-range car at 286PS and a 77kWh all-wheel-drive car at 340PS — with the Explorer from £35,185 and 273 miles and the Capri from £36,985 and 286 miles. The longest-legged Ford on either list is the Capri Select at 389 miles.

The Tourneo Courier, repriced 24 August 2026, is the only range offering the same body in petrol and electric at once: £28,490 for a Titanium petrol at 153g/km and £33,690 for the 46kWh 136PS electric version. The Mustang Mach-E starts at £50,840 for a 73kWh Select rear-wheel drive with 292 miles and tops out at £74,550 for a 91kWh, 487PS GT all-wheel drive. The petrol Mustang has a price list of its own, dated 24 April 2026, but it is served as a 3.4MB document whose price table could not be read, so no figure for it appears on this page.

The grant is awarded by model and the price ceiling bites by derivative

Ford does well out of the Electric Car Grant and the Government publishes the proof. The eligible-vehicles list at gov.uk, checked on 13 November 2026, held 21 entries in the £3,750 band and 48 in the £1,500 band. Ford appears four times. The Puma Gen-E and the E-Tourneo Courier are both in the top band; the Capri and the Explorer are in the second. On the mechanics, the Government is blunt: “You do not apply for the grant. The seller includes it as a discount in the purchase price.”

The money only lands if the car itself is inside the ceiling, and the ceiling is a car “priced at or below £37,000 recommended retail price”. That figure counts VAT — including VAT a business could reclaim — mandatory extras such as delivery charges or administration fees, the battery cost even where the battery is leased, and any option that changes battery capacity, drivetrain configuration or maximum net power. It leaves out ordinary options, the first registration fee and the first licence cost, warranties beyond the mandatory ones, insurance and service packages, and discounts.

Run Ford’s own recommended prices against that and the picture is sharper than the list implies. All four Puma Gen-E trims sit inside it, the dearest at £34,205 before options. Of the seven Explorer derivatives Ford prices, two do: the 58kWh Style at £35,095 and the 79kWh extended-range Style at £36,895. Of the six Capri derivatives, one does: the Style at £36,895. Those two £36,895 cars clear the ceiling by £105 apiece, which is less than a metallic paint option on most price lists.

Ford’s price lists do not mention the grant anywhere. Not on the Gen-E document, which is for a car in the top band, and not on the Explorer or Capri documents either. A buyer reading them has no way of telling which build attracts £3,750, which attracts £1,500 and which has priced itself out, so the discount has to be confirmed in writing against the exact specification before the order goes in.

Two further things the scheme tests, because they explain who is on the list and who is not. The manufacturer has to hold a Science Based Targets initiative near-term or net-zero target that has actually been verified — “Commitments are not accepted” — or be assessed at Transition Pathway Initiative Management Quality Level 4 or above with carbon performance at or under the sector’s 1.5°C benchmark for 2050. Then the car is scored on emissions, with battery production weighted at 70% and vehicle assembly at 30%, which is why where the cells are made matters more than where the car is screwed together. Ford clears all of it on four models. The Mustang Mach-E, which is fully electric, is in neither band.

Where the tax lines fall on a range that sells petrol, hybrid and electric

Vehicle excise duty is charged twice over on a new car and the Ford range is spread across almost the whole of the first-year table, which makes the spread unusually easy to see. The Government’s rates for a car registered on or after 1 April 2017 put a zero-emission car at £10 for its first twelve months, a 1-50g/km plug-in hybrid at £115, the 111-130g/km band at £455, 131-150g/km at £560 and 151-170g/km at £1,410.

Laid over Ford’s own emissions figures that produces a first-year bill of £10 on every Gen-E, Explorer, Capri, Mach-E and electric Tourneo Courier; £115 on the 21g/km Kuga plug-in hybrids; £455 on the 122g/km Puma and the 123g/km Kuga full hybrid; £560 on the 135g/km Puma ST and the 145g/km 1.5 EcoBoost Kuga; and £1,410 on the 154g/km Kuga ST-Line X and the petrol Tourneo Courier at 153 to 157g/km. The gap between the cheapest and dearest first-year bill inside one marque is £1,400, and the on-the-road prices quoted above already have it folded in — which is why a £40,485 Kuga ST-Line X costs £1,490 more on the road than its £38,995 list price while a Capri costs £90 more than its own.

From the second year the standard charge is £200 for a single annual payment, or £210 spread over twelve monthly direct debits. The expensive car supplement then lifts that to £640 a year for five tax years, starting from the second time the car is taxed, on any car listed above £40,000 on petrol or diesel and above £50,000 if it is electric. That is £2,200 of duty nobody mentions in a showroom because it does not appear on the invoice.

Measured against Ford’s own list prices including VAT, the supplement catches the Kuga from the £40,090 ST-Line X hybrid upward, the Explorer from the £41,025 Select upward, the Capri from the £43,195 Select upward, and all four Mach-E derivatives, the cheapest of which lists at £50,750. The near-misses are the interesting part. The Kuga ST-Line plug-in hybrid at £39,125 and the Active plug-in hybrid at £39,170 sit £875 and £830 under the petrol threshold, and the Explorer Premium all-wheel drive at £49,795 clears the electric threshold by £205. On any of those three cars a modest options list converts into £2,200 of tax, so the final list price is worth having in writing before the order is signed rather than after.

A code of practice sits behind the sale, and an ombudsman sits behind the code

A new car is one of the few big purchases in Britain that comes with a voluntary code approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, and Ford has signed it. The Motor Ombudsman states that “Ford UK is accredited to The Motor Ombudsman’s Motor Industry Codes of Practice for New Cars”, listing the business at Royal Oak Way South, Daventry, Northamptonshire, NN11 8NT. The code took full approval from the former Office of Fair Trading in September 2004.

What the code obliges an accredited business to do is concrete and almost nobody quotes it. Advertising “will not contain any content which is likely to mislead you or be misunderstood”. The base warranty is “intended to rectify manufacturing defects with the Vehicle” and its terms have to be handed over on delivery. If a warranty claim is refused, the buyer can ask for technical opinions “within 30 days of notification of the rejection” and the business must answer “within 14 days of the request” — the same clock applies to paint and perforation claims. Parts ordered directly have to arrive “no more than 30 days after you make your purchase”, and spare parts have to be available from launch for a period “ordinarily set as 10 years from the end of the production date”. A complaint should be acknowledged inside ten working days and the business “will provide their final response within eight weeks”.

That parts clause has teeth right now. The Fiesta and the Focus have both stopped, and the ten-year expectation is dated from the end of production rather than from the day a particular car was sold.

After the eight weeks, the buyer can take the dispute to The Motor Ombudsman, with a year from the complaint or the final response letter, whichever is later. The case goes to adjudication and can be escalated to an ombudsman, and the code is explicit about what happens then: “If the Consumer accepts the final decision of the ombudsman, it becomes legally binding on all parties.” The Ombudsman’s own figures put 46 vehicle manufacturers inside the New Car Code, “covering 98% of all new cars sold in the UK”, with nearly 1,200 cases a year capable of falling under it and around 11,800 consumer contacts a year across all four of its codes. Two things the code does not reach: it says nothing about recalls and nothing about advertised fuel consumption.

Sixty thousand miles, twelve years of corrosion cover, and a document from 2022

Ford’s live new-car warranty page gives the headline terms and little else: passenger cars get “3 years / 60,000 miles (whichever comes first)” and commercial vehicles “3 years / 100,000 miles (whichever comes first)”, with any genuine Ford part fitted during a warranty repair covered “for the remainder of the warranty period”. Roadside assistance is free for one year and can be extended by 12 or 24 months at a participating dealer depending on service intervals — not the three years some rivals include.

Three years and 60,000 miles is the same term Audi offers and half of BYD’s six years and 93,750 miles, and the mileage cap is the half that bites. A driver covering 20,000 miles a year is out of warranty partway through year three, and a company car doing 25,000 is out before the end of year two.

The periods the live page does not give are the paint term, the corrosion term and anything about an electric car’s battery. The Ford document that does carry them is the Service Portfolio, reference CG2147GBR, edition November 2022: paint surface at 3 years and 60,000 miles on cars, anti-perforation at 12 years with “No distance limit”, and a high-voltage battery “covered for eight years or 160,000 km (100,000 mi) (whichever occurs first)”, with a separate guarantee against capacity dropping below 70% of original. Twelve years against rust is a real commitment and more than the three-year headline suggests. The problem is the paperwork: that edition is four years old and its vehicle tables still run the Mondeo, the Galaxy and the S-MAX, none of which Ford sells, so a buyer who finds it is reading a range that no longer exists.

The extended cover, Ford Protect, publishes terms “Last updated: November 2023” and they are worth reading twice before paying for it. The high-voltage battery is outside it and sits under its own base warranty. So, in terms, is the mild hybrid pack: “Mild Hybrid batteries (MHEV) are not covered by this Ford Protect warranty.” Every petrol Puma, every Focus on the superseded list and the 1.5-litre Kuga is a mild hybrid, which makes that one sentence the most important line in the document for most Ford buyers. Normal wear items are out too, named as “ancillary drive belts, starter batteries, brake friction materials (including discs)” along with “spark plugs, engine oils & most fluids”. Cancelling inside the base period brings a full refund less a £25 fee; cancelling later brings a pro-rata refund by whole months, less any claims, less the same £25.

Euro NCAP scores the cheapest Ford lowest in the range

Nobody rates a car marque as a whole, so the only independent safety measure is model by model, and on Ford’s the newest cars score best while the best-seller does not. The Explorer was assessed in 2024 as a left-hand-drive 4x2 and published on 11 September 2024 at five stars: 89% adult occupant, 86% child occupant, 80% vulnerable road users, 72% safety assist. The Capri followed on 13 November 2024, also five stars, and returned the same four percentages — 89, 86, 80 and 72 — alongside the same named weaknesses. Two cars tested two months apart with identical scores is what a shared platform looks like in a results table, and it is worth knowing that the second result is not independent evidence about a second car.

On both, protection of the driver’s chest in the full-width rigid barrier was rated marginal, far-side excursion control was marginal, pedestrian and cyclist head protection drew “poor results recorded on the stiff windscreen pillars and at the base of the screen”, autonomous emergency braking scored Poor for a car approached head-on, and driver monitoring took 0.3 of 2 points, rated Weak.

The Puma is the awkward one. Tested as a 1.0 MHEV Titanium and published on 7 December 2022, it holds four stars on 75% adult occupant, 84% child occupant, 70% vulnerable road users and 69% safety assist. The named findings run longer than either electric car’s: marginal driver chest in the frontal offset, marginal rear passenger chest in the full-width barrier, marginal whiplash protection from the front seats and head restraints, far-side excursion control that “was poor”, head protection with “poor results recorded at the base of the windscreen and on the stiff windscreen pillars”, overall autonomous braking “rated as marginal” with poor results for a car reversing into an adult or child and for an adult crossing into a turning car, and a seatbelt reminder scoring 1 of 2.

Two caveats that cut both ways. The Puma was tested on the 2022 protocol and the other two on 2024, and Euro NCAP tightens its requirements between cycles, so the comparison is not quite like for like. And the Puma Gen-E has no entry of its own, so the electric version of Britain’s best-selling car has no published independent rating at all. The plain reading still stands: the cheapest car in the Ford range carries the lowest safety score in it.

Ford Credit is a bank, and it is not Ford Motor Company Limited

The car comes from Ford Motor Company Limited, company number 00235446, incorporated on 7 December 1928 and registered at Arterial Road, Laindon, Essex SS15 6EE, with manufacturing and new-car retail among its registered activities. The credit agreement does not. Ford’s own complaints page states that “Ford Credit is a trading Style of FCE Bank plc”, “Registered in England: No 772784”, authorised under “firm reference number 204469”, and registered at the same Arterial Road address.

One address, two companies, two regulators and two ombudsmen. A dispute about the car goes to The Motor Ombudsman under the New Car Code; a dispute about the finance goes to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and Ford Credit’s own wording is that “after a period of eight weeks, you have the legal right to escalate”, with 0800 0234 567 and 0300 123 9123 given for the service. Neither body can look at the other’s half of the transaction, which matters on a part-exchange that has gone wrong in both directions at once.

Ford Credit’s complaints page sets out the eight-week escalation right but states no acknowledgement period and no final-response target of its own, where the vehicle side publishes both. On a dealer-arranged agreement it is worth asking in writing which entity is the lender, which is the broker, and what the total amount payable comes to, because the price list says nothing about any of it.

Separately, Ford was running two dated incentives on 13 November 2026: a “£1,000 Welcome Saving” on selected new Ford cars with no part-exchange required, and a “£2,000 Pick-up allowance” on selected new Rangers contracted between 1 October and 31 December 2026, with the Ranger Raptor excluded. A trade-in valuation taken online is “indicative of the likely valuation, is not guaranteed, is not binding and may be subject to change” and is finalised when the car is physically inspected.

Three Ford price lists disagree with themselves, and a fourth is fourteen months stale

Publishing dated price lists is the right thing to do and Ford does it. Keeping them tidy is the part that has slipped, and a buyer checking a figure should know which document to trust.

The Puma list effective 5 August 2026 states the expensive car supplement twice and differs from itself. Its model prices page gives “an additional VED charge (currently £425” for five years “in addition to the standard VED charge per year, currently £195”; its own duty section gives “£440 from 1st April 2026” and “currently £200”. The Puma Gen-E list splits the same way, and its two sections also give different thresholds — £40,000 in one place and “£50,000 (Zero Emissions)” in the other. The Government’s table settles it at £440 and £200, so the lower pair is simply last year’s figure left in place, but one document should not need a third source to resolve it.

The Gen-E document is also served from a filename reading “Effective_1st_January_2026” while the first line of the document itself reads “Effective From 5th August, 2026”. The Mustang Mach-E list says “Effective from: 1st April 2026” on its cover and then heads its model prices table “Effective From: 7th January 2026.”

The stalest file is a second Puma price list, still live on ford.co.uk, reading “Effective from: 6th June 2025”. It prices the entry Titanium manual at £26,580 on the road against £27,145 on the August 2026 document — £565 apart, with nothing on the older file to say it has been replaced. The current list declares that it “supersedes all previous price lists”, which is true of the sentence and not of the server. A Focus list reading “EFFECTIVE FROM: 1st April 2026” sits in the same directory, pricing thirteen derivatives from £29,575 to £33,785 on the road, for a car Ford says it has discontinued.

The same lag shows on the front of the site. On 13 November 2026 the Ford UK car range page was still titled “New Ford Cars - Browse the Range Here | Ford UK” and still described itself as “The latest range of Ford cars. From the Fiesta and Focus to the Mustang and Ranger”. Two of those four are no longer sold new. None of this makes the current figures wrong — they are internally dated and they reconcile with the Government’s duty tables — but it is a good reason to take the on-the-road price for the exact build in writing rather than off a PDF a search engine happened to surface.

What the ombudsman is actually hearing about electric cars

Anyone weighing a Puma Gen-E against a petrol Puma is really asking what goes wrong with an electric car, and The Motor Ombudsman publishes the answer quarterly from its own caseload. In the figures released on 7 October 2026, electric vehicle disputes “rose by 80% in the third quarter of 2026” against the same quarter a year earlier: 1,271 cases against 706.

The shape of those 1,271 is more useful than the total. Customer service and purchase issues accounted for 45%. Interior and cabin systems took 11% and charging another 11%. Chassis and motor, electrical and software, and battery issues took 9% each, exterior issues 5%, and range issues 1%. The objection most often raised against an electric car is the smallest category in the complaints data, and the largest is the buying and servicing experience — which is a matter of which retailer a buyer walks into rather than which car they choose.

For scale around all of this: SMMT’s Motor Industry Facts 2026 records 2,020,520 new cars registered in the United Kingdom in 2025 at an average of 91.8g/km of carbon dioxide, down 10.1% in a year. The Puma’s 55,488 made it the country’s top seller and 10.5% of a supermini segment of 530,579 cars, ahead of the Kia Sportage on 47,788 and the Nissan Qashqai on 41,141. Ford’s entry model is not a niche choice, and the volume is the main reason parts, independent servicing and residual values on it are easier than on most things at the price.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 13 November 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.