The 205. The 306. Two reasons, you could argue, to pity Peugeot today and why the 208 has so much to live up to. With hits like that in its back catalogue, is it any wonder that its latest chart entries fail to scale the same giddy heights? Those heights aren’t necessarily defined by sales, but by lasting affection and identity.
In other words, by what they mean to enthusiasts.When was the last time that a Peugeot gave you ‘the drive of your life’, as one of the French car maker’s advertising tag lines once promised?
Our guess would be the late 1990s, when Peugeot seemingly handed Ford the right to make the most entertaining ‘normal’ cars in Europe and gave us instead the 1007, 206 and 307. The Peugeot 207, it’s fair to say, was even worse than the 206.
Recently, Peugeot has had better times. So here we are, with a replacement for the 207, on the back of some moderately entertaining, engaging family cars that show genuine promise.
If the 208 can recapture a little of the original spirit, this could be Peugeot’s best small car for a generation. We’ll see.
Despite a fresh face, name and engine line-up, the 208 is not quite as new as Peugeot would have us believe. Beneath the styling garnish resides the same PF1 platform that underpinned the 207 – hence the shared 2538mm wheelbase and the familiar MacPherson strut front and rear torsion beam suspension layout.
Nevertheless, Peugeot insists that much time and effort has been spent on improving ‘architectural performance’ and its stated goal of producing a car smaller on the outside yet larger on the inside than its predecessor should be the aim of every supermini maker.The most significant benefactor of the development process is the 208’s kerb weight, which, with the same 1.4 HDi engine as the 207, is now said to weigh 110kg less. Peugeot claims the entry-level model, with the three-cylinder petrol engine tested here, clocks in at just 975kg. Our scales recorded a fleshier 1080kg, but if you consider that the 1.4 Sport we tested in 2006 was just shy of 1150kg, it’s clear that some progress has been made.
Much of it can be attributed to the use of leaner materials, including high-strength steel panels and aluminium components, but the all-new three-pot engine alone is 21kg lighter than the four-cylinder unit it replaces.
The 67bhp and 81bhp versions form the virgin bedrock on which the rest of the carried-over range sits. Mated to a five-speed manual gearbox, it provides the 208 with a sub-100g/km starting point.
The car around it has shrunk (marginally) into its rehashed silhouette. The 207’s bloated front overhang has been reduced by 60mm and the rear tucks in by another 10mm. In spite of the reduction in length, Peugeot says it has freed up an extra 50mm of legroom for rear passengers by optimising the design and installing slimmer seat backs. There is plentiful room in the Peugeot 208 for four adults. Indeed, it is comfortably commodious by class standards. Even putting three people in the back works, as long as they’re not too large and demanding.
The front seat is widely adjustable. The boot is fine by class standards, too, and the rear seats split and fold adequately. It is even a relatively interestingly designed cabin. At a cursory glance, all is okay.The problem is that there are about a dozen superminis whose interiors are ‘okay’. There is nothing inherently wrong with that of a Seat Ibiza or a Fiat Punto, but you wouldn’t find us recommending them on the strength of them (or much else, in their case). And so it goes here.
The 208’s cabin is fine, but if you look deeper you’ll find that it has notable failings, too. The glovebox is pitiful, and if you want to use a cupholder you’ll effectively have to reach behind you.
Other features fall into the ‘good idea, but…’ category. The diddy steering wheel beneath the dials is a novel idea, but set it up for smaller drivers or those who like a low-slung driving position and you’ll remember why every other major manufacturer suggests reading dials through the wheel.
And although the new, ‘floating’ communications, audio and navigation screen on the centre console looks slick, try browsing through radio stations while you’re moving at moderate speed or on a bumpy road and you’ll crave six little preset buttons on the dashboard.
With a little finessing here and there, it all could have been so much better, living up to the promise that its design suggests it will have.
As it is, a Volkswagen Polo’s cabin feels of higher perceived quality. A Honda Jazz’s is considerably more versatile. A Ford Fiesta’s matches it for design and, mostly, material quality, while being easier to work. The 208 is left, in this company, being moderately acceptable.If the Peugeot's advertised weight reduction for the 208 has led you to hope for big strides in its performance, this won’t make easy reading. At best, the 1.2 VTi’s performance is ordinary – mediocre, even. At worst, in some ways it’s downright sub-standard compared with most other superminis of the same capacity and price.
That it takes a full 1.5sec longer than a 1.2-litre Suzuki Swift to crack a standing quarter mile, isn’t a massive condemnation, the Suzuki being one of the class’s dynamic over-performers. Owners of the 208 may not seem the type to be concerned by flat-out acceleration, but when the motive force on offer is as limited as in this car, they should be.More serious is the lack of refinement and flexibility displayed by the engine, which is electronically restrained from a standstill when you open the throttle wide and delivers its torque in an uneven and fairly raucous way through much of the rev range.
Worse still, whether you’re bumbling along in traffic or out on your own between the hedges, the 208 isn’t a particularly easy or pleasant car to interact with. Our test car had a troublesome clutch pedal with too much dead travel and a baggy manual gearchange; similar issues have dogged diesel models we've tested, Add a small but detectable dose of driveline shunt and the impression is of a car that feels imprecise and underdeveloped.
As for fuel efficiency, we’ve tested several petrol-powered hatches of the same size as the 208, some with bigger engines, that have returned better than its 40.9mpg as an average, but this is still a decent result. In the more gentle driving that owners are likely to give it, you should expect to see the good side of 45mpg.
In urban driving of the 91bhp e-HDI, we achieved more than 55mpg. Having said this, that version also cost nearly £18,000 (the cheapest diesel is just over £14k), which is a lot to pay for a 10mpg improvement.
Also in the 208 range is an efficient 1.0 variant (which provides a claimed 65.7mpg and CO2 emissions of 99g/km), plus five diesels, ranging from 67bhp to 113bhp, some of which are equipped with Peugeot’s frugal ‘micro-hybrid’ technology.
Four variants will be equipped with stop-start and the most efficient 67bhp 1.4-litre oilburner will return 83.1mpg and 87g/km. This engine delivers decent pep if you mine its mid-ranges.
Wet conditions skewed the results of our braking tests slightly, with the 208 stopping more quickly on MIRA’s grippier wet surface facility than on its dry handling circuit. The former result, at least, is what we’d expect of a good new supermini in 2012.It’s a particular pity that the pedal weights and shunt of the Peugeot 208 should afflict it so, because if you could look beyond the fact that its awkward drivetrain makes progress tiring, you’d find that the rest of the driving experience is far from unpleasant.
Again, sadly, you’ll note that we’re not saying it’s outstanding; a Fiesta has nothing to fear. At least, though, the stodge and heft that afflicted the 207 has, by and large, been banished to history.The 208 continues, to some extent, the promising themes set out by Peugeot’s other ‘08’ models and the RCZ. It rides very well for the most part. It steers relatively accurately – albeit in an overly light fashion that’s largely devoid of feel.
Its refinement is relatively strong, too; one of the most pleasing aspects of the new 208 is that it has been made much lighter than its predecessor without giving much away when it comes to cabin noise.
Is it fun, though? Does it feel agile? Not particularly. It would seem to us that Peugeot, put simply, doesn’t think this sort of thing is important any more. We would find a Fiesta, Mazda 2 or Swift more entertaining to drive. Even a Polo, noted for its maturity rather than its brio, is a preferable steer.
All of that is fine, as long as the car you are offering is easy to rub along with. The Vauxhall Corsa and Honda Jazz, for example, are just such cars. Crucially, though, all of the aforementioned and more are easier to drive than the Peugeot because of their driveline compliance.Subjectively, the 208 lags behind its mainstream competition by a significant distance. But thanks mainly to the three-cylinder engine, Peugeot has a statistical foundation on which to plant its price flag.
Although painfully slow – 62mph requires a 15.9sec wait – the entry-level 67bhp 1.0 VTi Access 3dr model has its nose tucked under both the 100g/km road tax threshold and a £10k price.
Doubtless, the showroom sales staff will point out to bargain hunters that even the value-added Korean manufacturers fail to match that attractive combination.
However, with the colour touchscreen gone and electric front windows listed as a comfort feature, the spec verges on destitute and is therefore unlikely to be popular in the UK.
With the 81bhp 1.2-litre version of the engine and higher-grade Active trim, our test car courts mid-range respectability, but its £13k price lands it among superior offerings from virtually all of Peugeot’s major rivals.
Lower-than-average emissions keep the 208 superficially competitive, but as superminis are rarely run as company cars and all VED bands below 130g/km are comparatively cheap, there’s a definite limit to this advantage. All diesels are road tax exempt, but then as are many of its rivals’ oil-burners.You’d be right to think that we expected more from the 208. We have no quarrel with Peugeot’s retention and update of an earlier platform because, as we’ve said many times before, architecture is so sophisticated that it’s quite possible to build a class leader upon proven technology.
However, in the 208’s case, too many failings seem to have been carried over, and a few of the new features – such as the novel interior touches, which we would have loved to report as being successful – don’t feel polished enough.It’s a theme that you could apply to all aspects of the 208; it lacks the class, verve and completeness of the best cars in this sector.
There’s an awful lot of highly capable superminis out there, and there are just too few compelling reasons to look at a 208 among them, which is why it fails to even make it into our top five list.
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