Peugeot want you to have quality time in this car, and so sound deadening is class leading, you can hardly hear the engine, and road noise is, to all intents and purpose, non-existent - even on our archaic chip-seal roads. Turn on the clear and crisp sound system and you can enjoy some very private quality time.
What you won’t appreciate is the pop-out cupholders, situated just above the sound system controls. Designed by the French for their love of espresso coffee, but useless for anything larger than a small flat white takeaway cup. If anything disappoints in the 508 it’s this.
But that’s a minor blip in what, over the six days, proved to be an enjoyable and remarkably well put-together car.
We looked for cheap plastic and failed to find it, equally we failed to detect wavy stitch lines on the seats and elsewhere. We looked hard for loose trim, missing screws and clips, but again were pleased not to be able to find these things.
Peugeot is one of the world’s leading makers of diesel engines, developing them for power, economy and environmental consideration. That philosophy is continued with the 508, the Allure coming with a 6-speed auto ‘box mated to the 120kW/340Nm 2.0HDi engine making cruising on motorways refined and comfortable.
When you want to have a bit of fun, the engine, paddle shift and gearbox all come along to play as well. The steering needs to be a wee bit tauter for faster work, the suspension copes with all the bumps and lumps it comes across and handles change of pitch and roll of the car quite well, making the ride smoother for those sitting on board. All up the 508 is no sports car, but it can move quickly and smoothly when you want it too, and that is no bad thing.
Buying a new car these days is time consuming, almost as much as buying a house. The days of dropping into the dealership and a quick half-hour drive around the block are gone. Nowadays there is a lot of technology to try out and even after six days with the 508 there were still little things we spotted on the drive to return the car, such as the little light ring on the gear stick, the pull-down drawer that reveals additional buttons and controls, and the complex but highly entertaining roof console that houses the LED interior lights and controls.
Lights, especially daytime running lights, have become a space the manufacturers can extract an advantage from and they are now more commonly seen, usually a strip of LED lights contained in or immediately below the headlights.
Peugeot has chosen a version of the xenon system where the headlights double as DRL, as well as being auto-dipping headlights, which to our surprise worked well. One aspect of the lights that caught us by surprise is the directional headlights. Turn the wheel and the lights point in the direction you are intending to travel. Initially we thought the system had those on/off fog lights, but no, the headlights actually point. Clever and a neat safety feature.
Frankly the 508 is a breath of fresh air against opposition that has progressively enlarged its cars while leaving the name the same. The 508 is designed to sit between the mid- and large-size segments, and on that basis there should be a fair few readers of this journal who will look long and hard at the 508 as a viable option against six and even eight-cylinder offerings.
Not with us yet, but coming from Europe later in the year, is the Aspire option, essentially an entry level version, with the same size body, comfort - cloth not leather - and fewer technological refinements. That said, with the size of the cabin and the boot space, the Aspire may well find favour in some fleets, particularly with Peugeot’s nippy and economical 1.6-litre turbo engine fitted to the same six-speed gearbox.
Could this be the car that revives the local Peugeot operation’s fortunes, taking it back to the halcyon days of annual sales exceeding four figures? Sime Darby and the Peugeot dealer network are quietly confident about this car, and, in our opinion, rightly so.