Review - Peugeot 308 GTi

Details: Peugeot 308 GTi 270 (T9)

Tested Model Year: 2017

Overview

I figured I'd start off the reviews on this page with a car particularly close to my heart - the T9 generation of the Peugeot 308 GTi. I recently sold my own example of this car, that I lived with for almost 3 years, and that is the car this review is based on. It's a car I very much had a love-hate relationship with over the 35,000 or so miles I drove it over, and you'll get to hear all about it if you are sufficiently bored enough to read on. Enjoy!

My Peugeot 308 GTi during a holiday to Northumberland

So, let me outline the specifics of my particular car. It was a pre-facelift 2017 example finished in what Peugeot dubbed 'Ultimate Red' triple-layer paint. Most 308s you tend to see on the road are in this colour, and for good reason - it's a stunning colour, particularly when the sun catches it just right. You could consider my one to be a 'poverty spec' car, as it lacked any of the few available options such as the Denon upgraded sound system, special two-tone paint or fixed panoramic sunroof. However, as standard these are very generously equipped cars, especially in '270' guise (a lesser-equipped '250' version was an option, but more on that later). Automatic LED headlights, massaging sports seats (bizarrely, these were not heated), 19" 'Carbone' forged alloy wheels, Torsen mechanical limited-slip differential and huge Alcon brakes are all standard, along with the usual things you'd expect such as cruise control, Satnav, electric folding mirrors and much more. The mid-2017 facelift brought more features, such as Apple Carplay & Android Auto, blind spot monitoring and auto park assist as well as a refreshed front end. The addition of a GPF reduced power slightly to 263hp, but the torque was bumped up and the performance of the car remained unchanged. The aforementioned '250' version of the car was also dropped, as thankfully most initial buyers saw sense and opted for the full '270' variant - which added the LSD, upgraded brakes, sport seats and alloys. Who wouldn't want that?

Driving

We'll dive straight in with the driving experience of the car. With a forged turbocharged 1.6 4-pot engine under the bonnet, you'd be forgiven for thinking this couldn't possibly compete with its rivals of the time. You'd be wrong. It's simply a win-win, with the car not only putting out far more power over a Mk7 Golf GTI's 2.0 engine, but getting more miles per gallon too. I could quite easily achieve over 50mpg on a steady motorway run without much effort. Couple that with a genuinely impressive kerb weight of just 1205kg (the Golf weighs over 1400kg) and you begin to see the pieces falling into place. Put your foot down and you'll be briefly treated to some hilariously old school turbo lag before being shoved back in your seat and finding yourself fighting the wheel as it briefly scrabbles for grip. When it finds that grip though, you're in for a treat. The Torsen LSD does a fantastic job at fighting torque steer, and feels simply physics-defying once it meets a corner. The car's light weight and the differential work hand in hand to ensure a confidence-inspiring driving experience. Point the car where you want it to go, and it will just go. PeugeotSport's tweaks to the incredibly stiff chassis are evident and the car feels lively and eager. Push hard enough and you may find it willing to poke the tail out a bit, but the subtle and unintrusive traction control ensures you won't end up flying through a wall backwards. The suspension does a decent job of soaking up the endless potholes and bumps of the UK roads, and though it couldn't be called particularly comfortable, it's certainly liveable. The brakes are absolutely fantastic - which you'd expect from 380mm Alcon discs and 4-piston calipers. Totally overkill and they genuinely feel like they could rip your face off, but it does save you the hassle of upgrading them if you're inclined to track it. You can always brag by telling your mates "my car uses the same brakes as an Ariel Atom you know". The stock engine & exhaust note is a bit underwhelming and very muted, but this can be easily rectified with a resonator delete, as a previous owner did with mine. This allows the car to stay quiet and refined when you want it to be, but when you want to have some fun, you're treated to genuine pops and cracks on the upshifts and an almost rally-esque and raw engine note. It is a brilliant sounding engine with just a simple exhaust tweak and something I'd highly recommend to an enthusiastic owner. Once boost kicks in, power is always there throughout the rev range, though you feel it start to fade towards the top of the rev range in 5th and 6th. It's worth noting that the car is torque-limited in 1st and has a tendency to bog if you try to launch it, so don't bother. This isn't a car for launches or straight line speed - look towards the Golf R or Audi S3 if that's what you're into. However, if you're into cars with bags of character, (mostly) excellent communication and superb handling, then you're in the right place.

It's not all perfect, though. The steering through Peugeot's smaller i-Cockpit steering wheel does feel disconnected, and on occasion you find yourself not entirely sure where the wheels are pointing. The manual gearbox is excellent (no auto option was offered), but the throw through the gear change is far too long and takes a bit of getting used to if you're familiar with the shorter, sportier throws on other hot hatches. The car's Sport mode also feels a bit pointless - pressing the button turns the dials totally red (meaning you can't see the redline), pipes some painfully fake engine noise through the speakers and makes the throttle pedal incredibly twitchy. Most owners, myself included, rarely use Sport mode. The everyday driving mode is more than capable of delivering the full experience. Overlook these minor flaws though, and you have a genuinely brilliant hot hatch that serves as an underrated and underappreciated competitor to your more everyday options. It's even several seconds faster on some tracks, depending on where you look for sources. It feels more raw and alive than any VAG offering such as the Golf or Leon Cupra, and the aluminium body's lightness means it feels slightly more dynamic than an i30N. However, it's worth mentioning the benefits of the other cars, especially the i30N's plethora of adaptive driving modes and standard equipment and the Golf's more premium-feeling interior.

Styling

Peugeot were surprisingly restrained with the styling upgrades of the GTi over the regular 308, limiting the changes to some subtle skirts and fins, a slightly different grille and some lovely twin exhausts on the rear. It makes the car a bit of a sleeper in a world of Civic Type Rs and Focus RS's with their big wings, loud colours and aggressive styling. This makes it endlessly entertaining when coming up against cars in the wild, who almost never expect a bland red Peugeot to be as fast, if not faster than them. However, if you're into turning heads, this may not be the car for you. You won't be getting many double takes or people waiting to take photos with this. Aftermarket is your friend though, with a few companies offering spoilers, skirts and other styling upgrades which do make the car more 'hot hatchey'. I caved in to this temptation and did add a boot spoiler, which personally I felt it could have used from stock. If you want to spend some serious money, you have the option of sending your car to ByFactory in France, where they will transform it into a widebodied masterpiece, which can easily be mistaken for a full-on touring car. Seriously, Google it. They're cool. 

My GTi featuring a subtle boot spoiler and black badging

Interior & Equipment

When you tell people that you own a Peugeot, you always get the "ah, right" response as they understandably remember the dark times of the brand. Terrible quality, terrible reliability and terrible styling. Happily, those days are gone. Enter the cabin and you're treated to (mostly) soft-touch materials, well-screwed together panels and a minimalist, modern design. It's worth pointing out that Peugeot's i-Cockpit layout isn't for everyone - a small steering wheel that you look over rather than through, a low seating position and high mounted dash cluster is a bit marmite - it works for some people, but really doesn't for others. Personally, it worked for me. I found it easy to live with and quickly got used to the small wheel - it truly added to the experience of feeling connected to the car when on the fun roads. The centre console is almost buttonless, with a single knob for volume controls and a decent sized screen above. One complaint here is the climate controls are included in the screen. This was always mildly irritating and the fact that more and more manufacturers are starting to do this is a huge pet peeve of mine - what's wrong with buttons?

The screen was also not particularly responsive, but it's worth noting that the facelift models (mid-2017 on) did get a much faster screen with better software and Android Auto / Apple Carplay compatibility. Happily, this screen is a simple enough swap into the pre-facelift cars and companies are out there that specialise in doing it. As previously mentioned, the car is generously equipped, with un-heated massage sports seats being standard on the 270 variant. Put it down to quirky French car things. Dualzone climate, LED headlights, Satnav, bluetooth, cruise control and all your other usual modern car expectations are all present though. The car also has a massive and very practical boot, but this does compromise rear seat space. There's no denying it's really very tight on the legroom department, but unless you're exceedingly tall, headroom isn't an issue.

Material quality is, on the whole, very good, with lovely part-leather / part-suede seats and squidgy soft touch plastics in most places you'd expect. One questionable decision involves the centre console where the volume knob is placed - this is horrible scratchy plastic on a part of the car you touch a lot, yet the immediate surroundings had much nicer, better quality plastic. This is such a baffling design flaw that still annoys me, and I don't even own the car anymore!

Running Costs & Reliability

For a hot hatch, day-to-day running costs on the whole are not bad at all. The relatively small 1.6 engine pays dividends here - I was always hard-pressed to dip below 35mpg and that's with some pretty heavy footed driving going on. Most mechanical parts are shared with other PSA models, and since the engine is derived from early BMW MINI 1.6 engines, there are some BMW parts present in the engine bay. I should point out that every 308 GTi 270 will eventually experience seized brake caliper pistons - it's a good idea to get these replaced with readily available stainless steel pistons. In my instance, a previous owner had already done this. The Alcon brakes are definitely the biggest cost on this car, with very few aftermarket options available. You're looking at a hefty bill when it comes time to change the discs and pads, so be prepared for this. It's highly recommended to change the gearbox oil and spark plugs on an annual basis, especially if you do higher-than-average mileage. That brings me neatly on to reliability.

Oh boy. This is where it falls apart - sort of. Before I get into my own experiences with this car, it's worth mentioning that I know of several owners who have had their GTis for years (some even track them) and have never had any issues. On the whole, most owners you ask would consider them very reliable as long as they're serviced and maintained correctly. Sadly, my fortunes would not be quite so good. We'll start with the less major and less expensive issues - I experienced blown shock absorbers (both sides), a very loud and screechy water pump, wastegate actuator failure causing a massive boost leak that took months to correctly diagnose due to misleading fault codes and symptoms, the driver's door keyless entry never worked (it's just theft deterrent, right?), a habit of eating through front tyres far quicker than it should, a snapped boost pressure sensor cable, two separate MAF sensor failures, intermittent TPMS false alerts and a loose heatshield. Not great, but not terrible right? Well... that's not all. The real kicker was the LSD disintegrating and shooting shards of metal into the gearbox and causing so much damage that even a gearbox specialist refused to even attempt a repair. With both new and rebuilt gearboxes on "indefinite back-order" from Peugeot, the car was out of commission for well over a month before I managed to source a refreshed 'box and LSD. This was a huge 4-digit bill that could've been even more expensive had I been forced to wait for a new one from Peugeot directly. The final bit of bad luck was the timing chain guide bolt simply falling out one day and causing a huge oil and vacuum leak. Somehow by pure miracle it didn't cause any damage, but it was the last straw for me and I ended up selling the car once it was repaired. The joke? Virtually none of these issues had ever been documented on a GTi before, and these forged 1.6 units are a far cry from the earlier 1.6 THP iterations, which did suffer from various major ailments. I became pretty well known on owner's clubs as the most cursed GTi owner in existence, and I have to agree with that. I really should stress that my experience genuinely seems to be just incredibly unlucky, and I'm confident it was used and abused by a previous owner. However, even after all that, if I'd been in a position to keep the car as a toy, I genuinely would have done so.

Summary

On the whole, this is a genuinely brilliant gem of a car which is often unfairly overlooked. It's a real shame that it wasn't more popular, as Peugeot have shot down any chance of future GTi models - at one point, they very nearly put a 494hp 308 R into production and if sales had been better, they would likely have gone ahead with it. However, with only about 400 GTis being sold in the UK, it does mean that there is a potential as a future classic. If you're optimistic, that is - Peugeots are generally not exactly appreciating assets, with a few exceptions. As it stands, the car's value has suffered, but that does mean you can get a great price for one, especially when compared to its contemporary rivals. It has its quirks, but it should not be ruled out over the likes of the Golf GTI or i30N. All three options have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it depends what really appeals to you. Take one for a test drive - if nothing else, I promise it'll surprise you. For all my extensive bad luck on the reliability front - which caused me a lot of financial issues and unreal stress, I genuinely miss it and desperately want another better kept example. I find myself constantly wishing for just one more drive on the fantastic roads around the Peak District and Yorkshire Dales. Because trust me - on the right road, there is virtually no better handling, better performing, better connected and more characterful car at the age and price point. For a car to cause me that much stress and yet still be so desirable to me - I'm not sure there's any higher praise for a car.