General Comments:

After driving this car for over a year now, I thought it would be good to offer my opinion, to give information about my experience, to help others decide if it is for them.

Exterior Design

Firstly, I must say the overall design of the car is beautiful. Outside, its sleek looks and attention to detail is truly an inspiration. The sharp looking front grille and sloping low profile long front with a gently curved shape is a vast improvement on anything Peugeot have done before. The traditional 3 lights design at the back is not lost in the Estate version, but looks even better in the Saloon model.

Interior Design

Inside it is roomy and well laid out, with the 'I cockpit' offering a digital display which is programmable. The steering wheel following on from the 'electronic' design is smaller than the average wheel, and almost hexagonal in shape, almost puts you into a cockpit of a fighter jet, or something similar.

Most of the interior is well designed and looks very pleasant on the eye, with a mottled effect dash, giving the impression of a black metal dash, but although pleasant to look at, it is plastic, and there is virtually no storage what-so-ever.

There are plenty of opportunities to create more storage, with the dash design pushing out towards the driver. The glove compartment, is exactly that, big enough for maybe a pair of gloves.

There is a compartment in the centre console with a dual sprung loaded catch for access, and an even smaller one nearer the gearshift.

As with most modern cars the start/stop button is provided here, providing keyless start, and in fact, as long as the key is on your person, the keyless entry and locking can be achieved just by holding the door handles.

The switch and accessory layout is, or should be quite cool, where it is a mixture piano key, dial, touchscreen and touch key. This looks quite nice, but I think the touch keys, would have been better to be soft touch buttons, as you have to look away from the road to find them. If they were buttons, you would have been able to feel the button without the need to look away.

I also think the actual accessory and options are pretty limited, and things I would have liked in the menus simply aren't there.

The rest of the interior is OK. The driver's seat has plenty of adjustments, but haven't found any memory options. The seat itself is very hard, and I have found the need to put on a piece of foam to stop the discomfort, on any journey over 30 minutes. The heater/aircon controls are very annoying, as they are on the touch display, so you have to switch to the heater display 'pages' to control on the screen, and can be very fiddly when driving, as even the up/down is touch, which has to be done manually, and all while taking your eyes of the screen. Would have been so much easier with a dial.

The entertainment system is OK, I use Android Auto from my phone for most functions, like sat nav and music, and it does offer the ability to audibly respond to messages, by speaking, although I do find this frustrating when even when speaking clearly, many words are misheard, and have to be corrected, if you can get it to work at all.

The speaker and music options are quite good, but phone calls can sometimes be a little flaky. There are controls on the steering wheel that can control most of this.

Safety

Most of the safety features of this car are good at first, and indeed in my opinion should be available in all cars. That being said there is some very strange thinking behind some of these features, which I will come onto.

The 508 has very good adaptive cruise control, which is very useful, with 3 distance settings, which is good for different road conditions: Far, Normal and Close. The Close option gives around 2 second gap which is suitable for dry and normal conditions. However I find this a little unnerving when I find I am responding to braking vehicles in front of me, before the automation kicks in. This is not so bad once you get used to it, and begin to trust that the car is going to brake, and maintain the distance.

This is sometimes a little annoying on the Normal and Far settings, as this constantly seems to invite other drivers to slot themselves into the nice safe gap that you intended for yourself, causing the brakes to kick in once more to open up the gap again.

Incorporated in this, is the automated self steering which attempts to keep the car in the lane you are in. The steering will be automatic as long as the lane can be followed, although this is where I need to mention a couple of things.

Firstly the autosteer is not by any means foolproof, and very often cannot detect the lane ahead. And the system constantly nags the driver if your hands are not detected holding the steering wheel. This is better on motorways and long dual carriageways, and less good on single road or country roads where it just fails all the time. And only on clear conditions. Does not work in bad conditions too well, and this is where the main problems lie.

This is supposed to be a 'safety' feature, and it is when the conditions are poor, you could use a little help and assistance. Instead with the constant alerts every few seconds if you let go of the steering wheel becomes very annoying, and made worse when you are on a straight stretch of road, and no need to adjust the steering, it will assume you have let go. You have to re-engage it by moving the steering wheel off the straight line. This I find very dangerous to jolt the steering wheel just to satisfy the system.

Furthermore, I cannot understand the thinking behind this concept, as it is as if the car's safety system is punishing you for letting go, when if it thinks you have let go, it will turn off the autosteer as a kind slap on the wrist, forcing you to take back control. Instead of a true safety system, detecting nothing and bringing the car into control.

If there was a reason the driver had let go of the wheel, say in a medical emergency, I would think it better that a well thought out safety system, could steer and stop the car to proper safety, rather than disabling the systems as if to say, 'you may have collapsed, but you're on the own'..

I see this as a bit like unlocking a seat belt moments before a crash.

Along with the safety features, in efforts to stave off the impending doom of the carbon footprint, the car does have 3 modes of driving, incorporated with start/stop technology.

Again this in itself is good, when it works. There does not seem to be any consistency to when this will work at all. It can be switched off, but when switched on can cause its own problems, as you never know when or how sensitive it will be.

The car has an electronic handbrake but no hill start, so if you come to a stop on an incline, and the start/stop kicks in, the car will roll back when the engine stops, something which I would not expect from an automatic. Unlike the Seat Leon for example, which holds automatically in all cases until you decide it's time to move off again.

This would have been so easy to correct, by incorporating the hill hold feature.

As mentioned before, the car has Econ, Normal and Sports mode, and I find that the Sports mode is the only one which circumvents a natural flat spot upon acceleration. In the other 2 modes, the flat spot takes a bit of getting used to, and I find myself having to anticipate gaps when approaching junctions and roundabouts.

The performance is more than adequate for most driving situations, and there is plenty of power if needed.

Driving

The overall drive is very comfortable, if you remember to include a bum cushion. The car handles well and is a smooth ride. Not much in the way of a huge turning circle, but this hasn't proved to cause any parking problems, once you know its limitations. It's a big and roomy car with ample room in the back, and enough storage in the estate for luggage etc.

The 508 has good economy for a big car, and the diesel model will do 500+ miles a tank, but has the annoyance of having to add 'Adblue' supplement every few tank fulls, but I guess this is the same as many modern diesels these days.

Overall

This is a pleasant car to drive, and generally for someone who uses the adaptive cruise all the time, with the ability to set top speeds in restricted zones, so not having to worry about breaching speed limits or crashing into the car in front. The safety features are annoying for reasons I have already mentioned, but I do think they are important, if done properly.

I think the design has a way to go on this, as I think the thinking is flawed, and could be improved dramatically. And this is my main gripe with this car. If the safety systems worked better in more challenging conditions to help the driver, rather than give up, or turn off when needed most, then this would be so much better, than the constant nagging alerts, just because you let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds.

Faults:

Nothing so far!

General Comments:

Exterior of this 508 is stunning - my car is dark grey, black alloy wheels and windows tints. Love the boxy shape, reminds me of Peugeot of old, yet still very modern looking.

The car is great to drive. 1.6 petrol performs well and does around 40 mpg. Auto box is smooth. Handling is sharp.

Interior - seats are very comfortable. Noise is suppressed well. But the positive points end there - there are too many blind spots as per modern cars, and the dashboard is horrific in my opinion. I hate the center console with the digital display and piano keyboard buttons for some functions. It's just... silly. Tries to be "futuristic" and fails. Steering wheel just looks... weird. Comfortable enough to hold however. If the center console had analog controls for climate and analog for speed display, this car would be near perfect!

Interior aside, this is a stunning modern car that is about as close to old sedans looks wise that you can still get. I don't know if I'd buy another Peugeot though, they seem to be going down the crazy electric/hybrid/futuristic route and technology that removes the fun from driving!