The Fiesta St is a fantastic little hot hatch but what if you need a little bit more space and practicality but you don't want to sacrifice the little hatch’s slick handling and guaranteed-to-put-a-smile-on-your-face driving experience.

Well Ford may well have the solution to your dilemma.

Meet the Puma ST. It shares just about everything with its little brother, including the one-litre, three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with 197bhp but maximum torque has been boosted to 236lbft from 214. Drive is sent to the front wheels through the same six-speed gearbox.

Being taller – albeit just 3cm – Ford have made some changes to compensate for the higher centre of gravity so the Puma ST has faster-acting steering, stiffer suspension, thicker anti-roll bars, an optional mechanical limited-slip differential and Michelin tyres that have been developed specifically for the Blue Oval.

Sounds promising doesn’t it. Well let’s find out if the Puma ST lives up to that promise.

The front Recaro sports seats are snug. They provide excellent support in every direction so there’s no danger of you sliding around uncomfortably as you tackle tight and twisty country roads. They’re also comfortable during longer stints behind the wheel so you’ll be ache-free when you arrive at your staycation destination.

Other “sporty” touches include a flat-bottomed steering wheel and lots of “ST” emblems dotted around the cabin.

You don’t sit as low as you do in the Fiesta – it would be a surprise if you did – but it’s not quite your typical lofty SUV perch. The driving position is, though, superb. The steering wheel, pedals and driving seat are in perfect alignment while the pedals themselves are set close together to accentuate the “sporty” feel.

The front pillars are quite steeply angled and that can obscure the view out at junctions while the rising window line and thick rear pillars mean that the view out of the back isn’t particularly good either. Rear parking sensors are standard – as are auto LED headlights and auto wipers – while front sensors and a rear-view camera are included in the driver assistance pack.

There’s an eight-inch touchscreen mounted high on the centre of the dashboard that comes as part of Ford’s Sync 3 infotainment package. It isn’t quite as slick as some rivals’ systems but the graphics are sharp and it is packed with features including Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, DAB radio and Bluetooth handsfree calling and audio streaming. There’s also a premium B&O sound system included as standard plus a wireless charging pad for your mobile phone.

You get a digital instrument binnacle in place of the analogue set-up and it is highly configurable, allowing you to choose what information to display, such as sat-nav mapping, audio info and trip computer.

Cabin quality is really rather good, particularly when you take into account the cost of the car. The steering wheel and gear lever are both wrapped in soft leather while the seats are finished in a delightfully cosseting and appropriately grippy faux suede. You’ll find lots of soft-touch, squashy materials across the more accessible surfaces higher up in the cabin and, while there are some more fragile-feeling plastics lower down, overall the passenger space compares more than favourably with rivals.

The front seats offer plenty of flexibility, including height, and the steering wheel adjusts for reach and rake so anyone and everyone should be able to find a comfortable driving position. Even the standard seats fitted to Titanium trim have lumbar support as well as a massaging function. ST-Line cars forego the massage function but provide much better lateral support thanks to thicker side bolsters.

The seating position is lower than most of its rivals but still much higher than you get in the Fiesta so you still feel as if you’re getting the commanding view of the road that SUV-buyers find so appealing.

Space in the rear lags behind some of its rivals, particularly in the ST which has slightly beefier seats. There’s room for a couple of taller adults but they might require a couple of stops to stretch their legs on longer journeys. Because the roofline is a little lower than you would usually expect from an SUV headroom in the back isn’t as generous as it is in either the Kamiq or T-Roc.

There’s a decent amount of in-cabin storage with large door bins, a cubby in front of the gear lever, another beneath the front armrest and a pair of cup holders between the front seats.

The boot will hold 456litres with the 60/40 split-folding rear seats in place and 1216 with them stowed away. It’s a fair way from class-leading but the Puma does have a bit of a party piece: Lift the boot floor and you’ll find the MegaBox, a space beneath that’s big enough to swallow a couple of suitcases.

You can even clip the boot floor to the back of the rear seats to let you carry taller cargo upright and there’s a plug at the bottom so you can hose it out and let the excess water drain away.

The boot floor is also height adjustable and when it’s set to its highest position and the rear seats folded down provides a perfectly flat load bay. Another clever feature is the parcel shelf which is mounted on the tailgate and rises out of the way when you open the boot.

Now, finally, we get to the important stuff because, well, this is a performance SUV so precisely how it performs is crucial.

The answer is a simple one: The Puma ST is probably the best-handling SUV on the market. Admittedly most SUVs aren’t renowned for being sharp, precise and agile but take nothing away from this car – it is the business.

That extra torque that Ford have extracted from the engine – the same one that powers the Fiesta ST – means that it’ll sprint to 62mph in the same 6.7 seconds as the hatchback. The engine has a deliciously muscular tone from low revs and power is delivered in a nice linear fashion across the rev range.

The standard six-speed gearbox has a short, sharp action and the gear ratios are well-selected to help you extract the very best out of the engine and contributes to a sense of oneness with the car and eveything that’s going on beneath you.

What really impresses though, as I touched on, is the handling. To help offset the Puma’s higher centre of gravity the suspension has been stiffened and the steering made a generous 25% quicker. Those changes certainly do the trick. The Puma ST, like the Fiesta, will rotate progressively around the front wheels if you ease off the power mid bend, letting you position it perfectly for your exit.

There isn’t, admittedly, a huge amount of information being fed back through the steering wheel but it is nicely weighted and precise so you can place the nose exactly where you want it.

As you might have gathered the suspension is firm. And you’ll feel it, too, particularly over small, high-frequency imperfections that can jostle you about a little a lower speeds but, once you pick up the pace a little it all settles down and the suspension adopts a calm, authoritative stance.

If you love the Fiesta ST, then you’ll probably love the ST version of the Puma with bells on. Unless you’ve absolutely got your heart set on hatchback the Puma offers all the same thrills as the Fiesta but with greater practicality. It’s also very well equipped and significantly less expensive than its rivals while still maintaining an excellent level of material quality.

I can’t think of a good reason not to buy one, can you?

PUMA 1.5i ST E/BOOST 5DR 200PS 6SP

Price: from £28,510

Engine: 1.5-litre turbocharged 3-cyclinder petrol

Transmission: 6-speed manual

Max power: 200PS

Max torque: 320Nm @ 2,500-3,500rpm

Max speed: 136mph

0-62mph: 6.7sec

Fuel consumption (mpg NEDC)

Urban: 30.9

Extra urban: 47

Combined: 39.2

Emissions (NEDC CO2) g/km: 134

For more information visit www.ford.co.uk