Peugeot 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered review

• Overview
• What is it?
• WHAT’S UNDER THE BONNET?
• WHAT OTHER MODIFICATIONS ARE THERE OVER THE STANDARD 508?
• HOW DOES THE SPECIAL SUSPENSION AND DRIVETRAIN FEEL ON THE ROAD?
• HOW MUCH IS IT?
• What's the verdict?
• Audi A4
• BMW 3 Series
• Jaguar XE
• Driving
• What is it like to drive?
• GO ON…
• IS IT ENGAGING TO STEER?
• AREN’T HYBRIDS ABOUT EFFICIENCY AND GENTLE DRIVING?
• DOES IT HAVE DRIVING ASSISTANCE?
• Interior
• What is it like on the inside?
• SHAME. WHAT’S THE REST OF THE INTERIOR LIKE?
• IS IT SUITABLE FOR FAMILIES?
• Buying
• What should I be paying?
• WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS LIKE?
• HOW MUCH ELECTRIC RANGE DO I GET?

Overview

What is it?

The 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered – we’ll call it the PSE from now on – has had a facelift. This powerful sporty hybrid hatch/estate was the first Peugeot performance car to launch in several years, to coincide with Peugeot’s return to Le Mans in 2022.

But it’s an outlier in Peugeot’s hot-car history. Not a hot hatch for a start. But also, Peugeot management keep insisting to us they are too busy electrifying the whole range to think about souped-up versions for several years to come. Boo.

The marketeers cite three key rivals: the Audi S4, BMW M340i and Volkswagen Arteon R, cars which aren’t hybrids, and which Peugeot hopes the PSE will mercilessly take down in fleet sales, where the unrealistically low official CO2 claims of this 508 (41g/km) ensure seriously competitive monthly tax costs for company-car drivers.

WHAT’S UNDER THE BONNET?

Believe it or not, but this is Peugeot’s most powerful production car ever, and can do the 0-62 sprint in 5.2 seconds, helped by 4WD traction.

A 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, in similar 200bhp tune to when it appeared in the 208 GTI hot hatch, combines with a pair of electric motors – one for each axle – for a peak of 355bhp. It’s all hooked up to an eight-speed automatic gearbox, good for 0-62mph in 5.2secs and a 155mph top speed (electronically limited, just like its German foes).

So yes, it’s 4WD, but the rear wheels are driven only by a 113bhp motor not the petrol engine. If there’s enough battery charge, it’ll run for miles in electric-only mode. In hybrid the engine comes in and out. From a full battery you’re promised 34 miles of emission-free driving in the WLTP test, although we’d be surprised to see more than 25 even in gentle town running.

The power split in engine-on mode is front-biased, with the ratio varying with how hard you drive. Head over to the driving tab for the full lowdown.

WHAT OTHER MODIFICATIONS ARE THERE OVER THE STANDARD 508?

To account for the big power jump, there are numerous tweaks. The suspension sits 4mm lower than a standard 508 as well as being 50 per cent stiffer and allied to three-stage adjustable damping. The tracks are wider (up 24mm at the front, 12mm rear) and you’ve massive 380mm Alcon brakes tucked behind mock-carbon 20in alloys wrapped in serious Michelin tyres. Peugeot’s done a proper job on it.

How to tell one apart from a stock 508? Its more assertive stance and aesthetic. Just look at those little winglets sprouting all along its sills. Then there’s the PSE badging – three acid-green slashes which Peugeot calls ‘kryptonite claws’, and which we’ll call ‘more than a bit reminiscent of a certain energy drink logo’. It’s certainly a looker, attracting plenty of attention in our time with it.

For the facelift, the front end is more differentiated by a black panel stretching right across the nose and grille, where the standard 508s have body-coloured paint.

HOW DOES THE SPECIAL SUSPENSION AND DRIVETRAIN FEEL ON THE ROAD?

Peugeot’s Dakar and Le Mans race engineers (they really were involved) did an amazing job of the suspension. It corners with zeal, and provides lots of feedback and confidence. Yet the ride isn’t punishing, especially not in the comfort settings of the adaptive dampers.

The powertrain is more problematic. In urban running it’s smooth and quiet, and indeed there’s plenty of all-electric power so that if the battery is charged the engine won’t need to be awoken. It also works well on flowing roads, the motors covering for any turbo lag in the combustion engine, and in medium-speed bends the electric rear torque helpings quell understeer and maintain traction.

The trouble comes in a roundabout or sequence of tight corners when you’re coming on and off the throttle suddenly. The whole powertrain gets confused, the transmission shifting too many gears too often, and the engine revs rise and fall like an out-of-control fairground ride. Alongside the suave six-cylinder in the rival BMW, it’s frustrating and crude.

HOW MUCH IS IT?

Well, it’s comfortably the most expensive car Peugeot’s ever sold new, which means as a private buyer we suspect you’ll have to be quite brave. And especially keen to buck the trend.

Prices start at £53,825 (the SW estate is £55,025) – or around £950 a month on typical private leasing terms. That’s comparable with the BMW M340i xDrive. But is the Peugeot that good?

Peugeot describes the 508 PSE as a ‘halo’ car, which is industry speak for saying it’s more about creating buzz than the profit on the car itself. We don’t expect to see many of these around, but we’ll salute anyone we do see driving one.

A big French car with a price tag this chunky will always be niche, but if you’re brave enough to give it a go you’ll be getting a car that’s attractive to look at, intriguing to behold and fun to drive on the right kind of roads. Meanwhile if you pay company-car tax you’ll be onto a fiscal winner. Does that sound like you? Send us a link to the classified ad when your lease finishes. Especially if you’ve gone for the ice-cool SW.

Continue reading: Driving

Driving

What is it like to drive?

With the PSE defaulting into Electric every time you start up, you’ll slink away from home in a very quiet but not especially quick car. It’s peaceful, though. Those gigantic alloys and frameless windows ensure it’s not completely silent inside when the 508 is in EV mode, but it’s impressively refined nonetheless.

Unless your journey is short or you’re in no hurry, though, you’ll want to prod its drive mode button to engage the petrol engine.

GO ON…

Above Electric, you have four modes: Comfort, Hybrid, Sport and 4WD.

Hybrid has the engine turning on and off to maximise your mpg, using lots of electric drive when the battery is charged, then running as a plugless hybrid when the battery’s depleted – it can still stop the engine, but for shorter periods. It gives you up to 325bhp.

Comfort by the way is the same powertrain mode, but it fixes the adaptive dampers at the softer end of their scale. The 4WD mode also sets the adaptive dampers to soft but keeps both axles driven. That’s for slippery going.

Sport, the mode we came for, stiffens the chassis – making the ride a little too knobbly on poor roads – and keeps the engine running all the time, with a sharper throttle response and gearshift map too. It allows the full 355bhp.

With the powertrain at full chat it’s swift, with strong off-the line. At really high speeds you lose the power from the rear axle – electric motors with single-speed drive can’t spin fast enough.

Apply the throttle smoothly and it’s quick, although for a sporty car the engine emits a drab sonic drone. This 1.6 has always felt a great little engine in quick 208s and 308s, revving uncommonly well for a downsized turbo. It just can’t help but sound a bit uncultured when it’s performing the same trick in a subtle grey saloon.

The real trouble comes when you’re on and off the throttle. The transmission is indecisive and allows the engine revs to rise and fall far too much, and leaves you stranded in the wrong gear. That’s even worse in hybrid mode, when the engine might have switched off altogether and there’s a further delay while it sparks up and gets on boost.

You can take control of the transmission via the paddles, but after just a few seconds it defaults back to auto anyway. Grrrr.

IS IT ENGAGING TO STEER?

Don’t let that detract too much from the 508 PSE’s dynamics, though. It’s low-slung and corners with little roll. The small steering wheel makes it feel agile, pouring enthusiastically into bends despite its 1,850kg mass. You can feel all four tyres doing their stuff, especially in slow and medium-speed corners when the rear axle drive evens up the attitude. There’s not much steering feel but plenty from the chassis and your seat-of-pants. Which means if you’re on a road that suits the powertrain, it’s a far more inviting drive than an Audi S4.

AREN’T HYBRIDS ABOUT EFFICIENCY AND GENTLE DRIVING?

If you’re light with your right foot the powertrain again comes into its own, operating smoothly and quietly. If you plug it in, it’s possible to see pretty good fuel economy too. That said, in these days of high electricity prices, you’ve got to add the cost of the kWhs to the cost of the litres, and will probably find there’s little saving per-mile.

In Comfort or Hybrid, when the suspension is most compliant, you’ll be abruptly shuffled up into its higher ratios. In Sport, the car appears to think it’s heading out for a qualifying session at La Sarthe, hanging onto low gears just a bit too keenly. A point exacerbated by the noise.

DOES IT HAVE DRIVING ASSISTANCE?

Lots. The full suite of all-speed cruise control with lane centring, which works pretty smoothly. Surround cameras help the manoeuvring. There’s even night-vision which presents a heat-sensitive camera view onto the driver’s screen. Other cars do this but because the screen is high up by your sight-line, it’s more use in the 508.

Previous: Overview

Continue reading: Interior

Interior

What is it like on the inside?

You’ll surely be familiar with Peugeot’s ‘i-Cockpit’ by now, with the instruments high-mounted and viewed over the top of a small steering wheel rim, rather than through the wheel itself, and it’s much of the sameness here.

The dinky steering wheel remains a crowd splitter, though. It’s fine if your hit is to sit with the seat-back fairly upright and the wheel not too high. Sadly, even after the facelift you can’t get the fancy 3D graphics in the instrument screen, as seen on the 208. A 50-odd grand technological halo car shouldn’t have its UI gazumped by its supermini range-mate.

SHAME. WHAT’S THE REST OF THE INTERIOR LIKE?

There’s a lot to like in here. Shout out to the ace big enveloping sports seats, which come with a massage function boasting five settings (with three levels of intensity apiece).

The upholstery, with texture-stitched Alcantara, looks and feels good, and the rest of the furniture as lively, smart finishes.

Perhaps inevitably, the 508’s flashes of its chintz occasionally feel a touch superficial. Frameless windows, which electrically buzz up and down an inch as you open and close the doors, bring a touch of exotica to a saloon or estate car. But given the rear doors have a fixed quarterlight of glass that stick crudely up, it could be accused of being skin-deep glamour.

IS IT SUITABLE FOR FAMILIES?

Peugeot’s big claim is that the batteries and motors of the PSE are placed so that they don’t eat into the 508’s limb and luggage space (487/530 litres in the saloon and estate respectively). Phew. Because this sits at the pokier end of the posh saloon market, with the devilish good looks on the outside resulting in slender windows and a slightly dark, claustrophobic feel inside. To get decent foot-space, people in the back need to plead with the ones in the front to raise their seats.

The SW estate adds more room for family gear, and still looks cooler when there’s just you aboard. Win.

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Continue reading: Buying

Buying

What should I be paying?

Prices start at £53,825 for the saloon, or £55,025 for the estate. Which, for a Peugeot with a 1.6-litre engine, seems punchy. That said, it has actually fallen since the car was launched two years before the facelift, at a time all other car prices spiralled. Read into that what you will.

Anyway, spec a BMW 330e up to similar levels and you’ll be paying similar cash for a hybrid saloon or estate with notably less power. And for raw performance and 4WD capability, the rivalling BMW is the M340i xDrive.

Peugeot reckons the vast majority of PSE buyers will be company car users. Which makes a whole lot of sense given its dreamworld 40g/km and 158mpg figures yield a 14 per cent BIK rate. In the real world, it’s more like 50mpg once the battery has flattened, so you’ve got to be diligent about sticking its cable into a socket, as with all plug-in hybrids.

It’s a tougher sell on the private lease market: perusing some finance calculators got us a £850-per-month deal (three years, 8000 miles a year, six months initial rental) when the Audi S4 and BMW M340i are around £800 on the same terms.

WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS LIKE?

Pretty good, truth be told: Peugeot throws in almost everything as standard. Key options are paint (grey is standard, black and white are £600 – nothing more gaudy is on offer) and whether you want a panoramic sunroof (£1100).

But the standard kit list is chocca. Matrix LED headlamps, adaptive damping, 20-inch wheels, night vision, 360-degree parking cameras, level 2 drive assist, massage seats, premium hi-fi.

HOW MUCH ELECTRIC RANGE DO I GET?

The WLTP test measures 34 miles of electric-only range, but bargain on around 20-25 in day-to-day urban driving – don’t use e-mode on the motorway as it disappears even faster. A full charge takes just under two hours if you’ve fitted a wall box at home, or seven hours on a regular three-pin plug. Overnight, basically.

You can charge it on the move, or maintain charge for the final city end of your trip, by activating a menu and opting for six, 12 or the full 26 miles of range in the bank, but you probably shouldn’t use this to bring the charge level back up from empty. It eats into fuel consumption.

Buy into the 508 PSE as a hybrid car, and you’d better be plugging it in. Treat it purely as a performance car and your average fuel economy might not be much better than petrol-only rivals.

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Continue reading: Specs & Prices

Keyword: Peugeot 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered review