Peugeot 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered review

Prices start at £53,825 for the saloon, or £55,025 for the estate. Which, for a Peugeot with a 1.6-litre engine, seems punchy. That said, it has actually fallen since the car was launched, at a time all other car prices spiralled. Read into that what you will.

Anyway, spec a BMW 330e up to similar levels and you’ll be paying similar cash for a hybrid saloon or estate with notably less power. And for raw performance and 4WD capability, the rivalling BMW is the M340i xDrive.

Peugeot reckons the vast majority of PSE buyers will be company car users. Which makes a whole lot of sense given its dreamworld 40g/km and 158mpg figures yield a 14 per cent BIK rate. In the real world, it's more like 50mpg once the battery has flattened, so you've got to be diligent about sticking its cable into a socket, as with all plug-in hybrids.

It’s a tougher sell on the private lease market: perusing some finance calculators got us a £850-per-month deal (three years, 8,000 miles a year, six months initial rental) when the Audi S4 and BMW M340i cost less on the same terms.

What are the options like?

Pretty good: Peugeot throws in almost everything as standard. Key options are paint (grey is standard, black and white are £600 – nothing more gaudy is on offer) and whether you want a panoramic sunroof (£1,100).

But the standard kit list is chocca. Matrix LED headlamps, adaptive damping, 20-inch wheels, night vision, 360-degree parking cameras, level 2 drive assist, massage seats, premium hi-fi.

How much electronic range do I get?

The WLTP test measures 34 miles of electric-only range, but bargain on around 20-25 in day-to-day urban driving – don't use e-mode on the motorway as it disappears even faster. A full charge takes just under two hours if you’ve fitted a wall box at home, or seven hours on a regular three-pin plug. Overnight, basically.

You can charge it on the move, or maintain charge for the final city end of your trip, by activating a menu and opting for six, 12 or the full 26 miles of range in the bank, but you probably shouldn’t use this to bring the charge level back up from empty. It eats into fuel consumption.

Buy into the 508 PSE as a hybrid car, and you’d better be plugging it in. Treat it purely as a performance car and your average fuel economy might not be much better than petrol-only rivals.