The Peugeot 508 PSE review: Hybrid packs in peak performance

Every now and then a car comes along — seemingly out of nowhere — and completely knocks your socks off, despite possessing an established preconception about obvious flaws which prior to driving it would have greatly lessened expectations.

In this case, the car in question is a PHEV (plug-in hybrid), which, as many readers will know is not the sort of thing that has curried much favour in these quarters. Indeed when any hybrid hooves into view, we have tended towards the three monkeys — hear no evil; speak no evil; see no evil — approach.

That hybrid technologies are wending their way towards obsolescence is a fact we have been keen to point out in recent years and, now that the government has ditched the tax breaks previously available for PHEVs, their usefulness is waning pretty quickly too.

But just as we had concluded that the day of the PHEV had come and gone, one of them comes along and completely blows all such theory out of the water. That ‘one’ is the plug-in hybrid Peugeot 508 PSE SW Hybrid 4 and the three most important letters in that title are the ‘PSE’ ones.

PSE stands for Peugeot Sport Engineering, which has been established by the French marque as a sort of stand-alone sub-brand and is slated to become a performance force in its own right, much in the same way as BMW’s ‘M’ division has become. Or Toyota’s GAZOO department, for that matter.

Given that BMW created its high-performance arm in 1972 —  that’s 50 years ago, folks,  —it might seem that Peugeot is a little late to the party, but PSE is a concept that has only come to fruition in recent years and is aimed at focussing all aspects of the company’s road-going sporting endeavours under one roof.

Peugeot has, of course, a wonderful sporting history — everything from Formula 1 to Endurance racing to legendary rally cars and on to stuff like Pikes Peak winners — but it seems it is now concentrating PSE on reinventing standard road cars as swashbuckling sports cars.

It comes in saloon and estate versions it was the latter — SW, French for a station wagon, allegedly — the version we tried. And what a thing it is.

With some 360 bhp on offer here, as well as four-wheel drive and drop-dead good looks the 508 PSE SW Hybrid 4 is the fastest production car Peugeot has ever made. This car, in fact, is very, very good indeed. Ok, so it is capable of just about 42 km driving on electric only, so as a zero-tailpipe emission vehicle it is of limited use. But, as a sports car, it’s fantastic.

When you first clap your eyes on it, you will be dazzled by the body kit that PSE has produced here – full of subtle intent. From a distance, you might not be able to see much that obviously differentiates it from its regular siblings, but there are a host of things going on here.

There’s a very aggressive diffuser, and really neat aero ducting on the front bumper and on the side sills in front of the rear wheels. These might or might not have any aerodynamic function, but they look really cool and give a hard-core edge to the exterior look. There is also a three-stripe motif going on throughout (Peugeot say it’s actually a three-claw motif) and that is the PSE visual signature.

On the inside, you get Peugeot’s characteristically snappy ‘piano’ switchgear and a load of faux carbon effect stuff built into the dash and surrounds. You also get their copyrighted but somewhat contentious i-Cockpit design with its pedal-car steering wheel.

The trouble most people find with this layout is that you practically have to lower the steering wheel onto your thighs in order to see the instrumentation because if it’s any higher you cannot see what the instruments are trying to tell you.

But, once you get used to the unusual layout, it sort of does make sense and is very liveable with, although initially, it is hard to see it working. One quibble on the décor, though, is that the heavy-duty plastics on the door bins and under the centre armrest do lower the tone on a car costing more than seventy grand.

That said, the comfort of the seats are well up to opulent French standards (the driver’s seat even has a massage function) and this is a genuine five-seater as well. It also has a vast boot and is actually astonishingly practical for a sports-oriented vehicle.

But that’s all window-dressing because once you fire this thing up and open the taps, you realise that you’ve got something really special here — especially so when you think how closely related it is to an honest-to-God repmobile.

From a standing start, 100 km/h comes up in just 5.2 seconds and top speed is a near staggering 249 kph (which is 155 mph for those of you who arrived on the planet at the same time as Methuselah). This is a car genuinely bursting with performance.

That performance comes from a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol 16v engine which is allied to two electric motors. The engine and one of those motors feed power to the front wheels, but the second electric motor feeds only the rear wheels to provide four-wheel drive. The total system output gives you just shy of 360 bhp and a whacking 520 Nm of torque.

All that is married to an eight-speed auto gearbox and the result is blistering acceleration and traction levels which are as impressive as anything else on offer here. The ride, naturally, is on the firm side, but this thing handles as if on rails.

I know this because I had to take it from Cork to Rosslare during the pre-Christmas Storm Barra and not once during that return trip had I cause for trepidation. Never once was I concerned by a crosswind (and there was plenty of that) or any perceived loss of grip.

In fact, its on-road characteristics are all the more impressive because this is a near 2,000 kg beast and yet the stuff you expect from such a heavy family car — persistent understeer, lack of traction and an inability to cope with an unexpectedly tightening apex — are non-existent. The engineers earned their crust with this one.

There is an adaptive suspension system and such things can actually create more problems than they solve on the worst that the Irish road network has to offer, but this one seems more sophisticated than most and eradicates the amount of time you spend on the bump stops when you are pushing on.

That this matched the capabilities of any number of allegedly ‘superior’ beasts from AMG, M and S ranges from Mercedes, BMW and Audi, was pretty astonishing in itself, but that it did so with disdainful nonchalance was pretty damn mind-blowing.

Of course, there is a caveat or two to get over with the Peugeot. How many people will be willing to pay AMG, M or S money for a Peugeot? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I don’t think there will be a lot of them.

The problem with that scenario is that those badge snobs will never know what they’re missing with this cracking car. Peugeot has genuinely pulled off an impressive trick here and with any number of PSE models apparently coming down the line, we obviously have a lot to look forward to. 

For now, however, this 508 is a fine statement of intent from the French outfit.

And all that wrapped up in faux ‘green’ clothing.