Pug-in hybrid
PEUGEOT 508 PEUGEOT SPORT ENGINEERED
The 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered is Peugeot’s first performance car in five years. It’s also, unlike almost every single one that’s gone before it, demonstrably not a hot hatchback.
What we have instead is a sports saloon and estate with a plug-in hybrid powertrain. The marketeers cite two key rivals: the Audi S4 and BMW M340i. Cars which aren’t hybrids, and ones they hope the PSE will mercilessly take down in fleet sales, where its unrealistically low official CO2 claim ensures 12 per cent BIK and thus competitive monthly costs.
If you’re buying at retail you’d better pop a few brave pills because the PSE costs £53,995 as a saloon, and £55,795 as an estate. It’s easily the most expensive car Peugeot’s ever sold new, but it’s the most powerful too. A 1.6-litre 4cyl petrol engine combines with a pair of electric motors – one at each axle – for 355bhp and 384lb ft peaks. While that makes it four-wheel drive, it’s not a mechanical set-up and the 508’s power split is front-biased unless you’re in electric-only mode.
That’s what the car defaults into on start-up, offering up to 26 miles of emission-free driving. But unless your journey is short or you’re in no hurry, you’ll want to toggle through the next four modes: Comfort, Hybrid, Sport and 4WD. Sound like too much choice? There’s actually not enough, as you can’t pair the softest suspension with the sportiest powertrain map. Given how knobbly the ride can get (not helped by its chunky 20in alloys), that’s a shame.
If Peugeot allowed that – and if it remapped the occasionally reluctant 8spd automatic gearbox at the same time – this car could be brilliant. Because it’s already close, with abundant grip and a lovely sense of the rear axle helping you through corners when you really give it some stick. The agility its engineers have procured from a 1,850kg PHEV is to be admired.
It’s way more interesting than an S4, getting close to the fun and involvement of the M340i while offering something else entirely. It slinks around comfortably when you’re just getting places – as its 70 per cent fleet users likely will be most of the time – before encouraging the kind of aggression you’d bring to Peugeot’s traditional hot hatch fare should the mood take you. Not least because it retains their dinky little steering wheel.
I can see the appeal in a slim monthly payment untapping something as exotic and intriguing as this from a company car list. As a private buyer, it’ll take a touch more imagination. I dare you...