Peugeot 308 Hybrid 180 2022 UK first drive

Well, it’s clearly not the retro revival for the 1980s Peugeot 309 that might have seemed like a pretty solid bet hitherto, with car design trends being as they are. Rather, this is the new Peugeot 308 family hatchback, fresh onto UK soil in right-hand-drive form - and it makes for three straight model generations of the 308 for the French car maker now without a model-identifying digit change. 

Most of Peugeot’s other model numbers end with an eight now, you’ll have noticed. I suspect that’s got more to do with building equity in a given model identity over decades than the simple fact that - as is so often reported as if it were brand-new information - eight is indeed considered a lucky number in China. (The Chinese market is actually much less lucrative for Peugeot today than it was a decade ago.)

This is one of those half-new ‘all-new’ models. It inherits a widely revised version of the last 308’s model platform (although the new car is both longer and lower than its predecessor) as well as updated versions of the old car’s 1.2-litre turbo petrol and 1.5-litre turbo diesel combustion engines. But it has two new plug-in hybrid petrol-electric powertrain options (one of which we’re testing here) and an all-electric Peugeot e-308 derivative will be introduced in 2023.

This looks like an ‘evolutionary’ styling update to these eyes, but that may be simply because Peugeot is currently consolidating its aesthetic rather than reinventing it. We’re used to what we’re seeing, in other words. It’s a pretty striking and appealing design in any case: all slim featured and sharply defined, with what still seem likeably compact dimensions despite the modest growth spurt.

Inside, the 308 is roomy enough in the front, but still quite short on both leg room and head room in the back so as to rule it out of a conversation about regular transport of a family of grown-up kids, where something like a Skoda Octavia, Honda Civic or Kia Ceed might still feature. Even the longer-wheelbase 308 SW estate version isn’t particularly spacious in row two; and boot space (which, market research suggests, hatchback buyers tend to prioritise over second-row passenger space in any case) has actually decreased compared with the previous model, with hybrid versions offering even less cargo space than regular derivatives.

The 308’s driving position, with its high-set instruments, low-slung steering column and downsized steering wheel, still seems curious at first - and it hasn’t changed much for this new model generation. You still feel as though you have to lock the steering wheel unnaturally low between your knees in order to see the car’s 10.0in digital instrument screen over the top of the flattened-off rim; and even when you do, the slightly squashed shape of the wheel itself means that, when you’ve got a quarter-turn of lock applied around roundabouts, your view of the instrument screen is blocked anyway. The unfamiliar feel of it passes with time, of course, but I’m still not sure I’d ever warm to Peugeot’s i-Cockpit ergonomics sufficiently as to prefer them to a conventional control layout, which is what the company claims its owners all unfailingly do.