Living with a Peugeot 5008: why we love driving this seven-seat SUV

This is our Peugeot 5008 – a stylish and spacious seven-seater which we’ve been running around in since March. We’ve already been over the spec on this car and what it’s like inside, both of which you can read about below.

In this third report we’ll be going over what this car is like to drive, and we really like spending time behind the wheel.

Let’s start with the engine. Our car is fitted with a 1.2-litre petrol hybrid system, and it’s actually quite nippy. The electric motor gives it good shove off the line – ideal for nipping out at junctions – and the three-cylinder petrol engine provides enough torque for overtaking at higher speeds.

And this decent performance doesn’t harm fuel economy either. On long motorway runs we’ve been seeing around 50mpg from the 5008, which is bang-on what Peugeot says it will do. Around town it’ll return 40mpg as well, it’s really not bad for a massive SUV like this.

The only downside to this engine is that it’s quite noisy when you put your foot down. When you’re extracting all the power from that three-cylinder lump and it lets out quite an unpleasant groan – a bit like when you ask your teenager to clean their room.

You might think that a large car like the 5008 would be a pain to navigate through tight city streets, but not so. It has a surprisingly tight turning circle at 11.2 metres – a Kia Sorento’s is 11.6 metres – which makes U-turns a breeze, as does the light steering.

It can feel slightly firm over bumps, but the upside to this is that it’s good to drive on a country road. Obviously it’s no sports car, but you don’t get much bodyroll through the corners, which will be helpful for travel sick-prone kids, and the small steering wheel gives the 5008 a sporty vibe.

Considering Peugeot had a reputation in the mid-2000s for slushy steering and lacklustre handling, it’s really good to see how far it’s come over the past decade or so. The new 5008 is a lovely thing to drive, and a very pleasant SUV to live with.

Living with a Peugeot 5008: Interior and practicality

If you grew up watching Top Gear in the mid 2000s, you probably remember the endless stream of Peugeot jokes. You know the ones, about how the dashboards were made of spit and Kleenex? Or how about the entire sketch claiming Peugeot was making terrible cars on purpose?

*Prices correct at the time of writing

It’s no secret that the French brand didn’t have the best reputation for build quality back then, but nowadays it’s making stuff which can easily compete with high-end German cars. We’ve been living with the Peugeot 5008 for about a month now, and we love the interior on this big seven-seater.

Starting with the design, this cabin just looks far more interesting than the one you’ll find in a Kia Sorento or a Skoda Kodiaq, with a funky square steering wheel and the multi-layered dashboard look great, although we’re not so keen on the shiny black plastic. It slightly cheapens what is otherwise a very well-mad and posh-feeling interior.

It’s practical as well. You can fit six-foot adults in all three rows of the 5008, although you won’t have much of a boot left if you do. Fold the rearmost seats flat and you have loads of luggage space and palatial rear legroom.

There’s loads of storage spaces as well, and they’re well thought out. You get a big cubby for charging your phone which is hidden away, and the centre armrest is air conditioned so you can keep your drinks cold. To keep things from rattling around, the door bins are lined with felt.

It’s a very touchscreen-heavy cabin, with almost all of the controls routed through the central touchscreen. While we would like some physical buttons, the customisable i-Toggles are a decent substitute. You can personalise your shortcuts so all of your most-used functions are just a tap away.

There is one annoying quirk in the 5008’s cabin though, and that’s the start button. You have to hold it down to start or stop the engine, and the length of time you have to hold it seems to change whenever you get in the car.

That’s a small gripe though in what is otherwise a fabulous cabin. Any motoring-based entertainment programme would struggle to make a mockery out of it.

Living with a Peugeot 5008: introduction

This is our new Peugeot 5008, a seven-seat SUV which we’ll be living with for the next six months.

So which model have we gone for? Well, the first thing to note is that this is the 5008 Hybrid and not the all-electric Peugeot E-5008. This particular car will be doing a lot of miles to and from Carwow video shoots – the sort of mileage that makes an EV impractical, at least without a home charger.

That means our 5008 gets a 1.2-litre petrol engine mated to a battery, an electric motor and a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox. It sounds quite weedy to move such a big, practical car around – we’ll see over the next few months whether it feels adequate or just underpowered. It’s unlikely to win any Carwow drag races, though.

In GT trim, as we have here, the hybrid 5008 comes in at a lofty £41,235 – or £42,585 as tested here, though by buying through Carwow you can save over £2,000 on average. Standard equipment is as generous as you might hope for that price – not only do you get the 21-inch display at the front, but our car’s fitted with adaptive Matrix LED headlights, Alcantara and artificial leather upholstery, a wireless phone charger and a whole suite of safety aids.

For optional equipment, we’ve gone for the £750 Cumulus Grey paintwork and the £600 ‘360-degree Vision & Drive Assist Pack’ – snappily named. It includes a 360-degree camera, highway driving assist, blind spot monitoring and some other safety kit, and seems good value for the price.

We’ll report back here once we’ve spent some time with the car and formed our thoughts on what it’s really like to live with, so bookmark this page and you can keep yourself updated. Check out our social media channels too, where we’ll be sharing more about the ups and downs of living with this Peugeot 5008.

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