Peugeot 3008 is a top SUV
PEUGEOT’S 3008 SUV goes right to the top of the class as far as I’m concerned.
It is hugely stylish and avant garde, impressively comfortable over all surfaces and very easy to drive in all situations.
In fact, it’s an almost perfect family-sized load lugger with more new technology than any competitor, including cordless smart phone charging, built-in Wi-Fi with its own sim card, and the brilliant i-Cockpit digital instrument binnacle – of which more later.
More and more these days, I request the petrol versions of cars, because they usually cost less to run over four or five years than the diesels.
Some diesel family hatches can take an amazing nine years to break even with the equivalent petrol model from the same range.
The 3008 is nowhere near as bad as that, but the 1.6 diesel in the same spec is likely to take more than four years to pay for itself when compared to the 1.2 turbo petrol I drove. A 1.2 I hear you ask? Yes, that’s right. This little beauty is a three-cylinder turbo to help keep emissions down, but it has 130bhp on tap, which is not far off the previous model’s 2.0-litre unit and in the gears it pulls even harder.
It’s as smooth as silk, very quiet and beautifully willing. It pulls well from low revs and hard from 2,000rpm in all the lower five of the six-speed manual gearbox.
There is even enough urge in sixth gear for most manoeuvres on the motorway, but third and fourth are perfect for quicker overtaking and lane changing.
The i-Cockpit dash is excellent in most ways and has a number of different layouts for the driver to choose at the flick of a switch.
The 3008 is a hugely impressive SUV and makes the perfect bigger car for a family.
The Peugeot 3008 1.2 PureTech GT-Line I drove costs £26,200.