Over the past couple of decades or so, mainstream European manufacturers such as Ford, GM, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat have abandoned the large car sector. Some just weren’t very good – step forward Fiat’s Croma, others were distinctly eccentric in their design – thank you Renault Vel Satis – others like Ford’s Granada and GM’s Senator/Carlton were worthy but lacked the Audi/BMW/M-B parking lot panache as those marques stretched their product portfolios to embrace a wider price band.
Peugeot has gamely battled on with models like the 605 and, latterly, the 607 but sales have consistently flat-lined, peaking at just over 19,000 back in 2005.
Undeterred they’ve come back with the 508, the estate version of which you see pictured here and that I recently drove at an industry test day. This is really a [Ford] Mondeo challenger in terms of size or a theoretical bog standard steel wheeled, rubber matted BMW 5-series wagon.
Question is, is it any good? Well. It’s very roomy sadly my pair of Golden Retrievers weren’t on hand to test the luggage bay, but I think they would have been impressed by its roominess. This version was powered by the same 2.2-liter diesel found in Ford’s Mondeo with 204 bhp and 332 lb.-ft. of torque, so it has got brisk mid-range performance. But why bother with paddle shifts? For heavens sake this is not a performance car but a family holiday barge and a diesel at that.
The ride would happily see me loaf down to Biarritz from the Cotswolds on the Autoroutes, but I wouldn’t stray off them looking for a challenging road into the Pyrenees.
There are more accomplished rivals: a Ford Mondeo is more involving and a Skoda Superb has enough space to house a baby Grand.
At the end of the day the 508 isn’t a bad car… it’s just not a rival to three German premier brands that will, in the fullness of time, be joined by a British competitor.
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