Car review Peugeot 508

Post on: 2011-09-05 By: admin

German saloons have hogged the executive car park for a generation. Could it be time for a posh Peugeot?
Sunday 4 September 2011
Power broker: the 508’s efficient e-HDi engine proves austerity doesn’t need to involve miserly cutbacks. Photograph: Observer
Peugeot 508Price £19,050MPG 64.2Top speed 122mphLast month, Alan Clarke, a 49-year-oldcompany director from Chesterfield, decided his Range Rover needed something to lift it out of the ordinary. He logged on to the DVLA's website where the personalised plate BO11 LUX caught his eye. He happily paid the asking price of £399 and set about entertaining the road-going public. But the DVLA doesn't share Alan's sense of fun and charged him with "causing offence". Odd, really, as it sold him the number in the first place. With thousands of plates released each year some are bound to slip beneath the DVLA's censorious radar – especially those that are, shall we say, a little more subtle than Alan's. National Numbers, a UK plate dealer, recently attended an auction in Harrogate where there was a lot of interest over the seemingly innocuous X351 ARO. The reason? It spells "oral sex" when glanced in the rear-view mirror.The Peugeot 508 that I've been driving this week wouldn't stoop to anything so vulgar, its number – A6 PEU – being little more than agenteel hint at its parentage. On the whole, the 508, and the people who'll be buying it, won't have much patience for vanity plates. They're too refined. And that isn't a word you often hear in the same sentence as Peugeot – solid, durable, workaday, economical, conservative, yes. But refined, no. Yet that is exactly what the 508 is. It's aposh Peugeot. It's fit and proper.The 508 heralds the great French marque's first foray into the premium sector in decades. Peugeot, which celebrated its 200th anniversary last year, is clearly fed up with our more recent perception of it. In 2010 it gave us sexy with its sensational buttock-backed RCZ, now it's bringing discreet luxury to the table.Brand analysts are obsessed with what they call "badge tests" – by which they mean: "the car says yes, but the badge says no." Will CEOs ever consider a premium-sector car that doesn't feature a German badge on the bonnet? The answer is yes. And because of the challenge ofcars like this, BMW, Audi and Mercedes are finding laurels aren'tas comfortable as they used to be.This new French saloon is undeniably handsome. It's large and roomy, which gives it an immediate presence on the road, yet it feels elegant and balanced. The car's styling fits neatly into Peugeot's new corporate look, overseen by head designer Gilles Vidal – the front grille has been made to look as it if is floating, giving the whole an impression of lightness, while the word "Peugeot" appears almost hidden under the bonnet lip – an allusion to the marque's pre-war classics. Inside, there is no sign of the brittle plastics and flimsy controls that dog so many downmarket motors. Here, it's all soft-touch leatherette and rubbery nubs. It feels top dollar. And it rides superbly – supple and assured.The 508 is defiantly eco-aware, too: none of its petrol-engine variants are larger than 1.6 litres and there is achoice of three economical diesels. The smallest, a 112bhp 1.6, produces only the faintest whiff of CO2 – 109g per km – and it will do 64.2 miles to the gallon. Next year a hybrid version is planned which will knock this down to below 100g. Frugal luxury for the eco exec could be a reality.Rain-powered transport in WalesThere is one thing the Brecon Beacons does particularly well – rain! At the start of a week-long family holiday on the northern edge of Wales's spectacularly rugged national park I checked the five-day weather forecast and found it said: light rain, light rain, light rain, heavy rain and heavy rain. But what better way to find a silver-lining in the ever-present storm clouds than to use the rain to power a cool, eco-funky vehicles. Two local researchers, Alison and Peter, are determined to encourage visitors to get out of their cars and enjoy the Brecons in a more sustainable way. One of their ideas is to use the hydroelectricity generated at the Usk reservoir to power small two-seat cars and they have spent the summer powering up two bespoke "b-bugs" – Boris and Blodwin – as part of their ongoing project looking at car use in the park.Anybody staying in the area who has a UK driving licence and comprehensive car insurance can take part in the trial by borrowing the b-bugs for a few days in exchange for their views about a novel form of "green" transport. The b-bugs have a top speed of 30mph and a range of 20 miles, at a cost of about 2.5p per mile. The idea is that you can pop to the local shops for a paper or the pub for lunch or enjoy exploring the country lanes in a fun and environmentally aware way – and make the most of a growing network of "b-bug friendly" charge points if you find yourself more than a few miles from home on a low battery. The trial is being run by a local research company, the Prospectory, and has been part-funded by the Welsh Assembly as a winner of the 2010 Hay Festival Green Dragons' Den competition. Depending on the results of the tests and the feedback given, the idea is that there might one day be a fleet of little b-bugs swarming over the Brecons, reducing the size of vehicles on the road, emitting no tailpipe emissions and bringing people closer to nature than being stuck in the car.I was invited to take part and spent four happy days with Blodwin. She is certainly great fun and demonstrably cheap to run. But I wasn't convinced that a b-bug really counts as a "non-car". Either way, it provoked plenty of discussion about the future of transport. And, best of all, Blodwin, the rain-powered buggy, acted as a magic charm – we had a week of glorious sunshine in the Brecons. And very few people can say that.To read all about the research, see pictures and a video of Boris and Blodwin in action, or to take part in the project, go to http://beaconsbuggy.wordpress.com/. For information about the Brecons and holiday cottages, go to http://www.breconcottages.com/ and http://breconbeacons.wordpress.com/Counting the caloriesBefore buying a Garmin you need to ask yourself one question: how much do you enjoy pain? Like a small and ruthless dictator, the Garmin bike computer crouches on your handlebars urging you to push yourself harder, faster and further than you ever would have gone before. Garmin makes a range of brilliantly innovative GPS-enabled gadgets which can be used in activities as diverse as aviation, golfing, motoring and hiking with the intention of stopping you from getting lost. Garmin's Edge 500, however, is aimed at cyclists, and it couldn't care where you go – it just wants you to suffer as much as possible on the way.It's about the size of a dinky toy and fits snugly on to a cradle which attaches to your handlebars. The easy-to-read and waterproof screen instantly tells you your speed, distance, time, altitude and descent – a barometric altimeter built into the Edge 500 records slight changes in elevation so it can project a more accurate analysis of your performance. It also, and I suspect this is the figure that anyone who is worried about there expanding waistline will focus on, tells you the calories you have burned. I was delighted to discover that my 7-mile commute to the office took care of 346 calories - that must have neutralised the croissant I ate at my desk.The Garmin Edge 500 is incredibly technical, but remarkably easy to use. In the week that I borrowed it I found I used it more and more to the point that a ride without it seemed a waste. When your ride is over you attach the Garmin to your PC which both charges the gadget (it will last for up to 18 hours on the road) and connect you to the Garmin Connect website where your efforts are presented to you for detailed analysis. It's all a long way from the old days of scrawling "40 miles, rain, hard" in your training diary.The Edge 500 bike costs £199.99 and is available from Currys (http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/garmin-edge-500-hrm-gps-enabled-bike-computer-10508893-pdt.html). Having tried the 500, I'd say that if you are serious and have the money to spend, it would be worth upgrading to the Edge 800 for an extra £150 as this offers all of the above but is also map equipped – so you can enjoy the pain of the training – and not get lost, too.Take it easyEarlier this month I had a week's holiday in Turkey – the first time I have visited that incredible country. I flew with my family to Dalaman airport on the southwest coast where we picked up a hire car from Sixt (sixt.com) for the two-hour drive along the Turquoise coast to the town of Kalkan. It all started so well. The flight was a little late, but the Sixt representative was happily waiting for us in the arrivals hall. He helped us load up the budget Renault we'd hired and pointed me in the right direction. The last thing he said as we left the car park was: "Beware of the police, they catch speeders round here."An hour later, having snaked through the atmospheric foothills of the Taurus mountains, the road opened up into a glorious, newly laid two-lane highway. There wasn't a car on the road – except for the police speed trap parked around the second long bend. I was pulled over by two jovial cops and told to pay the 290 lire fine – about £135. I was doing 110kmh in a 90kmh area.I felt hard done by, as you always do - even though it was a fair cop, as they say, but when I read some of the latest research about driving abroad, particularly in France, I realised I'd got away pretty lightly.According to Parkers (parkers.co.uk), almost half of the estimated 7m Brits who drove abroad this summer deliberately broke the speed limit safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't rack up points and get a subsequent driving ban in the UK.In France, UK motorists who break speed limits face a maximum on-the-spot fine of £1,470. In Italy the largest fine for speeding is a whopping £3,000. In more extreme cases in France police can confiscate your licence if you have exceeded a speed limit by 25mph or more. Police can even confiscate the vehicle.Craig Thomas, 46, from Tooting, was caught at a speed of 108mph on what he thought was a French motorway, or "autoroute". "A police motorbike flashed me down and I had to go back two junctions to a van where they were collaring other speeders. They took me to a cash machine and fined me 750 euros. I was rushing to catch a ferry, and they told me that if I wasn't leaving the country they would have taken my licence. I missed the ferry anyway, and it cost me even more as I had to pay for the next crossing."If you were speeding this summer and got away with it, you were lucky. Next year you might not be, so slow down.
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Car review: Peugeot 508
This article appearedon p57 of the Observer Magazine section ofthe Observer
on Sunday 4 September 2011.
at 00.04 BST on Sunday 4 September 2011.
It was last modified at 00.05 BST on Sunday 4 September 2011.
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Article original from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/04/wheels-peugeot-508-martin-love