Peugeot 208 GT Line
HELLO £23,775 OTR/£25,225 as tested/£318pcm WHY IT’S HERE
Is a small French car supposed to be posh and grown up? DRIVER
Ollie Kew
ON THE VERY DAY THE PRIME MINISTER GAVE THE BRITISH PEOPLE that infamous ‘simple instruction’ to stay at home, a Peugeot 208 was delivered to my house. Not this Peugeot 208, though. The blue one that arrived had 99bhp and a manual gearbox. Ordinarily, the whole TG team would’ve had a steer. Instead, it became a lockdown companion, covering a handful of miles on weekly shopping trips to keep the battery alive.
When lockdown eased it went away, and I wrote about how it’s so refined at speed, so beautifully put together inside, and so utterly planted in corners, it simply doesn’t feel ‘French’. It has a Germanic quality now.
Sure, it’s a wacky-handsome object, but the quintessential Frenchness of a small hatchback has always been rooted in being a bit tinny, a bit flaky, and a bit of a hoot. The new 208 doesn’t seem to be any of that. A few days later I received a very polite email from Peugeot, asking how they could relay to their engineers back at base that it was apparently ‘too good for its own good’. So, another 208 has come to stay. And, we’ll investigate.
This is the designer’s choice spec. GT Line is the top-rung trim for a fossil-fuelled 208: only the e-208 is allowed full ‘GT’ status. GT Line gets smart 17-inch rims and the all-LED eyes. Under the bonnet, the same engine: a 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo, but here upped to 128bhp and teamed with an eight-speed auto gearbox. How’s that for mature? This one’s been optioned with a very reasonable £300 assisted driving pack, adding radar cruise control and semi-robotic lane-following steering.
An identical 208 went up against TG’s favourite small car, the Ford Fiesta ST-Line, a couple of months ago. On account of higher monthly payments, a smidge less space, and being less fun in the bends, it duly lost our head to head. But everyone has a Fiesta. This is a wilfully alternative choice. So, let’s see if I can get along with Peugeot’s new normal.