Peugeot 308 GTI 270 by PS

Our 308 continues to split opinion, but we think we’ve found a middle ground

II HAD A LONG DISCUSSION with road test editor Dan Prosser about the 308 GTI recently. He’d just returned from a twin-test between it and the Golf GTI ( evo 229), and while it sounded like the Peugeot had been the more enjoyable car, he declared that he preferred the Golf for its all-round ability. Others on the evo team had expressed a preference for the Peugeot, though, so I began to wonder which I would favour.

Having now lived with the 308 for a month, I’m siding with Dan. That’s not to denigrate the Peugeot. Not in the slightest. The fact that we were talking about the narrowest margins – that the victory in this pairing comes down to personal preference rather than consensus – is proof that Peugeot Sport has taken a major step up.

Like Dan, I love the 308’s agility and alertness – it genuinely does echo the spirit and verve of a 205 GTI. Indeed, one of the pleasures of the 308 GTI is that you tend to seek out interesting roads, then go through a psychological rollingup-of-the-sleeves ritual to prepare for playtime. And playful it is. With the nose planted, you can agitate some mobility from the rear with the throttle. Likewise, you can lean on the diff extremely hard, and with the suspension settled fore-and-aft generate startling corner-exit pace.

The drawback is that this is all reliant on the front end hooking into a corner. And now that the roads are getting greasy and the standard- fit Michelin Pilot Super Sports are approaching 11,000 miles old, you can easily overwhelm the front axle with too much throttle. In fact, if you’re really clumsy the 308 will skip a car’s width across the road.

Overall I’ve enjoyed my brief stint with the 308. I love that Peugeot Sport has given it a unique character in a class largely made up of cars built from the same ingredients, and it should be applauded for building a car that is more than a dynamic equal to the Golf GTI.