Peugeot 508 Hybrid

The Peugeot 508 SW is comfortable and relaxing to drive, but despite its sporty steering wheel, there are more enjoyable estates to point down a winding road

In town

You can no longer buy a Peugeot 508 SW with a manual gearbox unless you shop for a used example. That’s no great hardship around town, where an automatic makes life easy in heavy traffic.

What’s not so easy is your view at junctions or while reversing. The thick front pillars create big blindspots, and you won’t see much over your shoulder through the small rear windscreen. Fortunately, the 508 SW comes with parking sensors front and rear and a rear-view camera, even on the basic Allure model.

Light steering helps with low-speed manoeuvres, as does the small steering wheel, and at low speeds it's pretty comfortable over bumps. The standard suspension can fidget a bit, especially on larger alloy wheels, but high-spec cars with adaptive suspension are pretty forgiving of urban lumps.

To keep emissions right down, you can choose one of the plug-in hybrid cars. The less powerful of the two will travel up to 34 miles on electricity alone, so plenty of school runs and commutes can be completed without any exhaust emissions. As well as being good for local air quality, it’s a quiet and relaxing way to get around.

On the motorway

Change lanes and put your foot down to accelerate up to 70mph and the gearbox can be a bit slow to respond. It’s not so much of an issue with the hybrids, as electric power takes up a lot of the slack, but you do notice a pause with the petrol and diesel models.

The diesels that Peugeot has dropped from the range were ideal for motorway miles. Now, you'll probably want to stick with the petrol engine if you regularly do longer distances. It doesn't quite pack the same punch that the diesels did, but it gets up to speed quickly enough and is quiet at higher speeds.

If you want to feel like there’s some power in reserve at motorway speeds, either of the plug-in hybrids has a lot more power than the combustion-engine-only car. However, you'll drain the batteries quite quickly, so if you can't charge very regularly you might find economy is worse than non-hybrid models.

You do get a bit more wind and road noise than you’d hear in a Volkswagen Passat, but not enough to really get on your nerves.

On a twisty road

The range-topping 508 SW Peugeot Sport Engineered is a bit of an outlier in the range. It’s so much faster, both on the straights and through the bends that it feels like a completely different car.

Other 508 SW models are competent enough on a twisty road, but don’t approach a B-road with the same relish. The Peugeot is better suited to boulevards than B-roads.

Play around with the optional adaptive suspension in a GT-spec car and the 508 SW handles well, but it never offers the kind of engagement that a BMW 3 Series Touring owner takes for granted.

On standard suspension, comfort rather than agility is what you can expect – it’s not a car to put a smile on the face of press-on drivers.

Front seat passengers get a decent amount of space, but the rear seats are a touch cramped and alternatives have bigger boots

Slide behind the wheel and the first thing you notice is the steering wheel. It’s tiny, and looks like someone has fitted a wheel from a games console for a bet.

It feels weird at first, but you do get used to it, so long as you can position it to be comfortable and see the instruments – not everyone can. You look at them over the wheel rather than through it as you do in most other cars. Peugeot calls this the iCockpit, and it’s a bit of an adore-déteste feature.

The driver and front passenger’s seats are height adjustable on all models, and also get lumbar adjustment as standard. The front of the seats can be extended for more under-thigh support on GT spec and above.

That funny little go-kart steering wheel adjusts for height as well as moving in and out, so folks of most shapes, heights, and sizes should be comfortable.

Storage is pretty good with the exception of the glovebox, which is tiny because it’s half-filled by the fuse box. But the door bins are big, and there’s a large space under the driver’s armrest. As you’d expect, there are two cupholders between the front seats.

Space in the back seats

The rear seats don’t offer as much space as you’ll find in the VW Passat Estate or Skoda Superb Estate, but whether that matters really depends on how tall your passengers are.

Headroom is much improved compared with the 508 Fastback saloon-styled model, and there’s enough legroom for average-sized adults. However, more space for feet under the front seats would make it easier to really stretch out, especially for tall passengers.

There are ISOFIX mounting points in the two outer rear seats, and in the front passenger seat. However, they’re behind zips, which makes them fiddly to use, and the sloping roofline makes for a narrow door opening through which to lift a bulky child seat.

Boot space

Some estate cars are all about practicality. Some sacrifice space for style. If you’ve read this far you’ll know the 508 SW is definitely in the latter camp.

That’s clear when you look in the boot. In isolation it’s a practical space, and there are lots of hooks and tie-downs to make the luggage area more useable. But a capacity of 530 litres is nothing to get excited about when the Skoda Superb Estate offers a cavernous 660 litres and the VW Passat isn't far behind on 650 litres.

If you need more room, the rear seat backs fold forwards. They don’t quite lie flat though, so there’s a slight slope to the floor. Still, it's a useful 1,780 litres of space, though this is again some way behind the Skoda's 1,950 litres.

There's plenty of high-end style and material quality, but the small steering wheel takes a little getting used to and the infotainment isn’t the most user-friendly

The 508 SW is all about offering a less boring, more stylish alternative to the massed ranks of humdrum estate cars. That’s evident in the look of the cabin as well as the handsome exterior.

We’ve mentioned the iCockpit already. Setting aside any issues with seeing the instruments clearly, it does give the cabin a really sporty look and feel. That’s somewhat at odds with the driving experience in all but the PSE version, but if the cabin of a Volkswagen Passat makes you yawn with boredom then the Peugeot is certainly very different.

We really like the piano-key style shortcut buttons for the infotainment. They’re useful and good-looking. The standard of finish is high, so long as you look at the top half of the dash and doors. Lower down you’ll find harder, scratchy plastics and cheaper-looking materials, but you can say much the same of most family estate cars.

Look over the steering wheel and you’ll see a 12.3-inch digital instrument panel. The driver can configure the display with different themes and to show different information. It adds to the smart and high-tech vibe.

The 508 SW now gets a 10.0-inch infotainment display as standard. It's a decent upgrade on the old 8.0-inch unit that came as standard before the 2023 update, boasting crisp, clear graphics and fast response to your touch.

It’s still not the best system, though. Yes, the shortcut buttons are handy but the menus aren't the most intuitive to navigate. You have to use the screen to adjust the air conditioning, which is a faff compared with pressing a real button.

No doubt most owners will plug in their smartphones and use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, which are both standard.

With just two engine options to pick from, plus the sporty PSE version, choosing your engine is easy.

For most people, the petrol is probably your best bet. It’s not the quickest of cars, but it’s affordable to buy and still delivers reasonable economy. Official figures suggest up to 50mpg is possible, but you can expect more like 40mpg in normal, mixed driving. You would have to decide whether the considerable up front extra cost of the hybrid could be offset by lower running costs, which largely comes down to whether you have access to charging to keep the batteries topped up.

If you’re a business driver choosing from a company car list, the 225hp plug-in hybrid is the smart choice. Because of its low emissions (23-33g/km) and ability to travel on electricity alone, it sits in a low benefit-in-kind tax band. You'll pay 14% compared with 31% for the petrol.

The high-performance PSE is also a good choice for company car drivers for similar reasons, but otherwise the high list price makes it hard to justify, even though it’s very economical for such a quick car.

Be aware that if you buy a 508 SW costing over £40,000, you’ll have extra Vehicle Excise Duty to pay in years two to six.

When the safety experts at Euro NCAP tested the Peugeot 508, it scored the maximum five stars. This was the Fastback model, but the SW should be every bit as safe.

The 508 earned a 96% score for adult occupant protection, 86% for child occupant safety, 71% for pedestrian protection and 79% for its safety assistance systems.

All models come with an active bonnet to keep pedestrians away from the engine in a collision, and a lane assist system to steer the car towards the centre of the lane if it starts to drift.

Security kit includes an alarm with a tilt and lift sensor.

A few years ago, Peugeot didn’t have a great reputation for reliability, but in recent years the brand has improved a lot. It’s finished near the top of some customer satisfaction studies, and the latest models are a lot more durable than Peugeots used to be.

If something does go wrong with your 508 SW, all new Peugeots have a three-year warranty. Mileage is unlimited for the first two years but capped at 60,000 miles in year three.

That’s pretty much in line with industry standards, but you’ll have a longer cover if you choose a Hyundai, Kia or Toyota.