Peugeot 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered review

With the PSE defaulting into Electric every time you start up, you’ll slink away from home in a very quiet but not especially quick car. It’s peaceful, though. Those gigantic alloys and frameless windows ensure it’s not completely silent inside when the 508 is in EV mode, but it’s impressively refined nonetheless.

Unless your journey is short or you’re in no hurry, though, you’ll want to prod its drive mode button to engage the petrol engine.

Go on...

Above Electric, you have four modes: Comfort, Hybrid, Sport and 4WD. Hybrid has the engine turning on and off to maximise your fuel economy, using lots of electric drive when the battery is charged, then running as a plugless hybrid when the battery's depleted – it can still stop the engine, but for shorter periods. It gives you up to 325bhp.

Comfort by the way is the same powertrain mode, but it fixes the adaptive dampers at the softer end of their scale. The 4WD mode also sets the adaptive dampers to soft but keeps both axles driven. That's for slippery going.

Sport, the mode we came for, stiffens the chassis – making the ride a little too knobbly on poor roads – and keeps the engine running all the time, with a sharper throttle response and gearshift map too. It allows the full 355bhp.

With the powertrain at full chat it's swift, with strong acceleration off-the line. At really high speeds you lose the power from the rear axle: the electric motors with single-speed drive can't spin fast enough.

Apply the throttle smoothly and it's quick, although for a sporty car the engine emits a drab sonic drone. This 1.6 has always felt a great little engine in quick 208s and 308s, revving uncommonly well for a downsized turbo. It just can’t help but sound a bit uncultured when it’s performing the same trick in a big saloon.

The real trouble comes when you're on and off the throttle. The transmission is indecisive and allows the engine revs to rise and fall far too much, and leaves you stranded in the wrong gear. That's even worse in hybrid mode, when the engine might have switched off altogether and there's a further delay while it sparks up and gets on boost.

You can take control of the transmission via the paddles, but after just a few seconds it defaults back to auto anyway. Grr.

Is it engaging to steer?

It's low-slung and corners with little roll. The small steering wheel makes it feel nippy, but you'll never escape the shadow cast by its 1,866kg mass. You can feel all four tyres doing their stuff - especially in slow and medium-speed corners when the rear axle drive evens up the attitude - although there's not much steering feel. In fact, most of the feedback you get through the steering column is road buzz. Gah.

Shouldn't hybrids be about efficiency and gentle driving?

If you're light with your right foot the powertrain comes into its own, operating smoothly and quietly. But that defeats the object here, doesn't it? You don't buy a hot saloon to chill out in the same way you don't buy slippers to run the marathon.

If you plug the 508 PSE in, it's possible to see pretty good fuel economy too. That said, in these days of high electricity prices, you've got to add the cost of the kilowatt-hours to the cost of the litres, and will probably find there's little saving per-mile.

In Comfort or Hybrid, when the suspension is most compliant, you’ll be abruptly shuffled up into its higher ratios. In Sport, the car appears to think it’s heading out for a qualifying session at La Sarthe, hanging onto low gears just a bit too keenly. A point exacerbated by the noise.

Does it have driving assistance?

Lots. The full suite of all-speed cruise control with lane centring, which works pretty smoothly. Surround cameras help the manoeuvring. There's even night-vision which presents a heat-sensitive camera view onto the driver's screen. Other cars do this but because the screen is high up by your sight-line, it's more use in the 508.