Climb up into the Kuga (and we use the word ‘up’ advisedly) and if your Kuga is in the same Titanium spec as ours and stacked with more extras than you thought an options list could carry, you will behold a land of polished metal surfaces and shiny chrome finishes complete with touch-screen navigation and a selection of knobs, buttons, dials and switches to keep the most technophile of fans happy.
And at first all seems to be well. Front three-quarter visibility is a little restricted by the thick A-pillars, but otherwise there are no complaints about the way Ford has chosen to site you as the driver, or the simple logic with which it has positioned the major controls around you.
However, the optional navigation/entertainment system is not as easy to programme and operate as its touch-sensitive screen should have allowed it to be.
A perhaps more serious issue lies behind you, where you’ll discover that, for all the Kuga’s perceived size, there’s not much space for your children or chums. Legroom is particularly tight, while even headroom is hardly generous for a car with such a high roofline.
As our test car showed (a top-of-the-range Titanium model to which almost a further £6000 of extras had been added), it’s easy to let options sheet enthusiasm carry you away to a bigger bill than you’d ever imagined. But if you resist the urge to play fast and loose with the spec, you’d find the Kuga has been priced quite aggressively against its competitors and some distance from the likes of the Land Rover Freelander 2.
Similarly, no one runs a car like this expecting world-leading economy or saintly emissions levels, but the 31.6mpg we achieved in testing would most likely translate into a 40-42mpg real-world consumption for a sensibly driven car living out of town.
But you should bear in mind that while its 169g/km CO2 emissions are the best in its class, that still means a Band E £170 tax disc this year and £175 in 2009.