PEUGEOT E-LEGEND

What is it?

A rebirth of the Peugeot 504 Coupe, sharpened and puckered and finished with otherworldly precision. This is the car that really set the Paris show alight.

The e-Legend packs the full gamut of future buzzwords. Electric? Tick! Autonomous? Tick! Connected? Tick!

We’ll start with the electric powertrain. Power and torque are rated at 450bhp and 590lb ft, enough for a 4.0-second 0-62mph time. That would make it Peugeot’s quickest, most powerful road car. It’ll apparently cover 370 miles on a full charge, too, and that’s on the new, more real-world WLTP test. Even more staggeringly, you can extract around 300 miles from 25 minutes on a fast charger. Clearly, designing cars is more fun when the numbers are made up.

Now, the autonomy. Peugeot reckons driving is still important – no point having all that power and leaving it for the computer brain to enjoy – and thus the e-Legend comes with four driving modes, two of which involve actual driving.

Legend is a cruising mode, and Peugeot uses it as an excuse to hark back to the pretty Coupe that’s inspired the e-Legend’s looks, supplemented by an art deco wooden steering wheel and teal velour seats. Boost does what it says on the tin, bringing all of that 450bhp to life.

The autonomous modes are Soft (focused on relaxation) and Sharp, which brings all your social media hecticness onto the 49in wide screen inside, so that lovely time away from it all in a car simply becomes another portion of your day glued to the internet. When you’re not driving, the steering wheel retracts away so as not to block any of it from view.

Can I buy one?

Peugeot says, “Its styling is a glimpse into the future.” Which is French for: “Not a chance, mon ami.”