It’s stylish, French and the Peugeot 3008 put a smile on my face

What with Citroen exiting the Australian car market I only very rarely get to drive French vehicles these days. After some time in this new Peugeot 3008 maybe that’s a shame.

The Peugeot 3008.

Clichés are the refuge of the lazy journalist, and the métier of the sports writer. And now, it seems, they are also racist. I was recently told by my Woke Adviser/daughter that I am no longer allowed to engage in Chinese whispers, let alone use that term aloud, and when I gave her a Chinese burn in response she firmly assured me that this age-old move had also been cancelled.

I only very rarely get to drive French cars these days. Indeed, I’ve just looked it up and Citroën – the brand with the longest-running history in Australia, having been on sale here for 101 years – stopped selling cars locally last year. I could have sworn it had given up years ago because there were so few on the road.

I don’t think it was the clichés about French cars that put people off Citroën, partly because something needs to be part of popular culture for clichés about it to survive. Betamax and Kodak are only examples of brand immolation if you’re old enough to remember them.

As I approached the shapely and modern-looking new Peugeot 3008 Hybrid, with its lovely Gallic nose, I attempted to put aside my preconceived ideas about French cars, including the abiding image that they are built by hapless hommes with comical moustaches smoking Gauloises and spilling baguette crumbs and Chablis into the engine bay. The plus side of the cliché collection is that French cars are supposedly stylish and quirky, ride wonderfully well and are, generally, sprinkled with sporty joie de vivre.

Starting price? $52,990. Photo: Supplied

I was slightly worried about that last part after learning that Peugeot has recently rationalised its Australian offering to the point where all of its variants – from the child-sized 2008 through to the 3008 and the strikingly attractive 408 “Fastback”, right up to the 5008 seven-seat SUV – now use the same three-cylinder, 1.2-litre mild hybrid engine, making just 100kW and 230Nm. I’m sure that’s enough to make the 2008 as punchy as a Parisian, but in the 5008, which weighs more than 1.5 tonnes before you put seven humans and luggage in it, that sounds, how you say, like putting a mouse’s heart in a fat cat.

Fortunately, thanks to the boost it gets from the 15.6kW/51Nm electric motor part of its hybrid set-up, the 3008 is the little mouse that roared. It doesn’t exactly fly up hills, but if you whack it into Sport and choose to row through the cogs yourself, using the double clutch transmission, there’s definitely some fun to be had. At one stage I accidentally skittered onto a section of dirt road and the Peugeot – a brand with a rich rallying history – felt right at home.

I also really enjoyed the Nappa leather seats, which are so plush and comfortable you’d swear they’d been stolen from a far more expensive car, a German one even. Where the 3008 really overdelivers, though, is in the style department, which is, again, very much what you’d expect from a Pug.

The Peugeot 3008 i-Cockpit.

The curved aluminium dash looks somehow more three-dimensional than it is (yes, that does sound impossible, but it’s true) and changes its look as you shift through the various performance settings, thanks to ambient lighting that makes it feel like something from the Tron movies. Plonked on top of that is a floating, 21-inch curved display that puts the instrument cluster, and the central touchscreen, up nice and high so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road – and floating in front of all that is the typical Peugeot steering wheel, which is the size of a side plate.

Wrapping around and between that are some lovely textured textile surfaces that make you “Ooh là là”, just a little. Indeed, they look like they could be turned into trousers for a fashion victim in an emergency (I guess this is when the fashion police are called).

I’m noting how well designed it all is because Peugeot has struggled with this in the past. It still calls this set-up the “i-Cockpit™”, which is brave because previous versions were better described as “i-Cocked-up”. The company’s quirky designers insisted on positioning the steering wheel in such a way that, despite its tiny size, it completely obscured the speedometer and indeed most of the dials. When you complained to Peugeot about this, they would tell you that you were doing it all wrong and that the answer was to drop the steering wheel down so that it was resting on your groin, and then you’d be able to see the dash. It took a while, but the 3008 has fixed this irritating issue, leaving owners free to enjoy this tiddling tiller, which, thanks to its size, gives the drive experience a pointy, go-kart sensation, although the steering could use some more weight.

The starting price for a 3008 Hybrid is $52,990, which is expensive if you think of it as a competitor for affordable Asian vehicles, or a bargain if you think of it as a premium – and très chic (that was close, I nearly missed a cliché) – European car.

Peugeot 3008 Hybrid

Engine: 1.2-litre turbocharged three-cylinder petrol mild hybrid (100kW/230Nm)

Fuel economy: 4.9 litres per 100km

Transmission: Six-speed double-clutch automatic, front-wheel drive

Price: $52,990

Rating: 3.5/5