Peugeot 3008 (2016-2023) review

This is where the 3008 is likely to win most sales. The interior is impressive for so many reasons, and the mid-life update has only served to improve it. Few carmakers who’ve attempted to outfox the Volkswagen empire by employing quirky design have done so successfully, yet Peugeot’s nailed it. The dashboard looks spectacular but (nearly) everything works properly, and it’s laid out with plausible sense given how wild it looks on first impression.

The exception, mind, is the squirrelling away of the climate controls within the slightly laggy but now larger 10-inch touchscreen, with no simple ‘back’ button to CarPlay, sat nav or radio once you’ve adjusted the temperature. Instead an awkward three-finger press gets you to the home screen. Why oh why can’t we have physical buttons? You’ll fiddle with the air con significantly more often than the heated seats. The Campaign for Real Buttons continues here. We shan’t dwell on it, though, as Peugeot’s not the only culprit.

What else caught your attention?

We can’t criticise much else in here. The materials are all high quality, there’s a more arresting mix of shapes and colours than those dastardly Audis, Skodas and VWs offer and if it’s a high driving position you seek – you’re shopping for an SUV, after all – the 3008 offers exactly that, supported by fantastic seats with a swathe of massage functions if you’re buying higher up the range. It’s a proper premium product in here. Cavernous and with an abundance of genuinely useful storage bins, too.

This sounds roundly brilliant…

One final bugbear. Sorry. Y’know how some manufacturers hide fun little ‘Easter eggs’ within their cars? Joyous little surprises such as arcade games built into Tesla screens, etchings in Jeep windscreen surrounds, kiwi birds machined into McLaren hinges… well, whatever the opposite of an Easter egg is, Peugeot’s fitted one via the warning alarm you’ll hear if you nip the door open while the engine’s running, but the handbrake’s disengaged. Just like you might every single time you reverse close to a kerb to make sure you don’t ding the alloys.

The sound is so shrill, it might just shock you into having the collision it’s seemingly warning you against. We can only assume Peugeot buyers have a tendency to fall out of their car while manoeuvring. Let’s call it the BHAS (Brian Harvey Avoidance System). This is possibly quite a niche joke.