Peugeot 508 PSE SW - long-term review

You join us exactly 90 seconds into a 10-hour journey from Calais to Courchevel for an upcoming feature. Rowan is frustrated behind the wheel of Charlie’s 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered; the designated support car that’s chock-full of cameras and artery hardening confectionary.

Rowan Horncastle: Gahhh! Why can’t I change the dials from mph to km/h? It’s got to be in the menu somewhere. But I can’t find it ANYWHERE! Charlie, have a gander would you.

48 minutes later

Charlie Rose: Finally! After much swearing and grunting, I’ve found it. Most frustrating process ever, and not my first run in with this irritating infotainment. Peugeot’s idea of a fool proof system appears to be a hybrid mash of physical buttons and a touch screen with more menus than you can shake a stick at. Want to adjust the climate control? Simply use the touch screen to change the temperature with a few prods. Want to direct some warm air on your feet while you’re at it? No no, click a physical button to take you to a separate menu. Daft. Anyway, to change the dials to km/h you just need to… Bloody hell, I’ve forgotten!

10 minutes later

CR: Ok, now I’ve got it, perhaps we should write that down for the way home.

RH: Have you changed it? I can’t see it. Oh, sorry. I forgot – Peugeot decided to attach the world’s silliest steering wheel to the car. One that not only looks like it was fed to a vice first but was then shrunk down to the perfect scale to obscure all sight lines to the dash and digital instrumentation.

CR: Look, I concede that the steering wheel is rather… quirky. There’re really two options if you want full line of sight of the digital dash. 1) Lower the wheel onto your lap and 2) drive with your head skimming the headliner. I’ve opted for the former, just embrace the awkwardness.

250km later

RH: What’s that bong?

CR: (Peering behind the silly diddy steering wheel from the passenger side) Fuel light.

RH: What?! We only filled up in Folkestone. This is a big, practical estate car – surely it can carry a continent’s worth of fuel.

CR: That’s what you’d think, but it’s actually got a dinky 43L tank. With all the hybrid gubbins there’s not much space. Add to that its 1,850kg curb weight, a boot full of camera equipment and two burly blokes, we’ll be stopping quite a bit on our way down. The hybrid drivetrain doesn’t help matters either. A full charge gets a realistic electric-only range of around 15 miles and now that’s spent we’ll be lucky to hit 35mpg! 

At a nondescript French service station that smells of human fecal matter and sub-optimal coffee

RH: Wow. The locals really like the way this thing looks. There’s a crowd admiring it. To be fair, it does look really good. But over here it’s really got a je ne sais quoi.

CR: There’s no doubting that it’s a fantastic looking thing, and how cool is it to see how proud the French are of their own cars? Look at that, a lot of people seem to be completely ignoring the £500k Rolls-Royce for our £55k Peugeot. It’s got me all excited to see what’s next from the PSE division.

Approaching The Alps

RH: Errr, there appears to be quite a lot of snow up there.

CR: They are mountains. In winter. But don’t worry, I picked up some snow socks at Halfords for £42.00. It was actually more straightforward than I thought given this is on rather large 20-inch wheels. Look, there’s a handy table on the back of the packaging so all you need to do is identify your tyre size, 245/35 in our case, and then match it up with the snow sock size… so XXL.

RH: These are XL, Charlie.

CR: Ah. Well at least we’ve got four-wheel drive, eh?