Missing the cut
9th Peugeot 308
Given that this field might have swollen to something approaching 20 cars if we’d included every family hatchback on the market, ninth place isn’t such a terrible result for Peugeot’s four-year-old 308. It made it into the starting blocks on the basis that’s it’s a handsome and desirable hatchback with a characterful engine and a pleasant, quietly ritzy interior, facts that none of our testing confounded.
So what damned this former European Car of the Year? The answers, simply put, are disappointing practicality, average real-world economy (see p52) and soft, uninspiring handling.
The 308 has the least spacious second row of all the cars here; its boot may be of a good size, but the sense that the former has been sacrificed for the benefit of the latter is a compromise that none of the rest of our field asks you to accept.
This is a classic European-sized hatchback, however, and as such offers a compactness that you won’t find everywhere else in this group. Ought that to translate as greater handling nimbleness than the car actually has, though? We think so, because distinguishing agility is only present in the 308 driving experience up to a fairly superficial level. Although Peugeot’s downsized steering wheel makes the car flit around car parks and busy junctions quite easily, when you corner at higher speeds you must contend with muted, over-assisted steering, and discouraging amounts of body roll that are enough to blunt the handling balance the chassis might otherwise have, and also to make the 308 understeer quite untidily at the limit of grip.
The standard sport suspension and bigger wheels of a higher trim level might have made for a more convincing dynamic showing here – but, as it was, we could rank the 308 no higher.
8th Vauxhall Astra
The Astra is the quickest-accelerating car in this test on paper. That’s not something you were expecting to read about a mid-range Vauxhall, I dare say. It’s roomy and wellequipped, too, and specialises in the sort of unambiguous value for money that Vauxhall appears to be claiming as its specialty, at least for its more conventional hatchbacks and saloons.
But none of that will prevent you from noting the distinctly unlovely rental-car vibe conjured by the car’s cheaper cabin materials (of which there are plenty), or the relative lack of dynamic finish that’s evident in the way it drives. The clutch pedal action feels woolly and imprecise, ride quality is slightly hollow and excitable in its shortage of wheel control, and steering is light and can be pendulous as you add lock, giving you very little impression at all of how hard the car’s front wheels are working.
The Astra’s 1.4-litre engine is quiet at cruising crank speeds and makes decent torque, but it doesn’t feel like the most potent or vigorous motor here due to its gathering coarseness and breathlessness at high revs.
But for a shortness of footspace in the second row, there are few reasons to complain about practicality. Yet overall, having been presented with at least a glimmer of visual interest by the car’s exterior styling, you’re left with very few reasons to really want this Astra when all is said and done. And meat and potatoes, however competently cooked, can only take Vauxhall so far.
7th Seat Leon
Wondering if a bottom-half ranking looks a bit tough on the Seat Leon, a car that we’ve consistently rated highly in this model generation?
It was an unavoidable quirk of timing that this test had to happen just after Seat switched production of its hatchback into 2019-modelyear specification – and from