£30,900
Seats:
Good for:
Bad for:
Being British, I know only too well how to savour the sweetness of another's misfortune. But the faux-concerned smiles of the group of onlookers who'd gathered to enjoy my moment of torment last weekend as I tried to retrieve my keys from inside a closed boot was enough to leave a very sour taste in my mouth.
'What I don't understand is how exactly you managed to shut your keys in your boot,' an elderly woman kept repeating. Others smirked while offering me coat hangers, credit cards and even half a brick to help me break in. I'd put the keys down to get a two-handed grip on a heavy box and had then slammed the trunk with my elbow - forgetting all about the keys. The delight of the gawpers was due to the fact that this had happened to the driver of a £31,000 car. If I'd been at the wheel of a 15-year-old fume-belcher, there'd have been genuine empathy. But drive a snooty car and the crowd's schadenfreude is understandable.
And Peugeot's stunning two-door coupe is a snooty car. The 407 started out as a decent saloon aimed at those with flamboyant taste. If you're the kind of person whose eye was drawn along the sale rail past the plain greys to the outer reaches of 'statement' colours, then the 407, with its outrageously large, shark-gilled 'nose', was for you. It even prompted Jeremy Clarkson to say that the car 'should sue for failed rhinoplasty'. But the Cyrano de Bergerac grille, an 'homage' to Ferrari, has gone on to win most of us over. So much so that Peugeot has decided to step up to the premiership and roll out a supremely luxurious coupe version of the 407. This means the French carmaker, usually associated with nifty runarounds and reliable workhorses, has shoehorned as many gadgets and gizmos into the car as is humanly possible. To sit in the driver's seat could bring on an attack of technophobia in even the most hardened button-pusher. The central console has 62 buttons on it - I counted them while stuck in traffic - covering everything from voice-activated satellite navigation to hands-free phone use. In fact, it's a challenge to find something it can't do. The car also boasts a sophisticated parking system. When you approach an obstacle, an image of your car pops up on the console surrounded by concentric rings of flashing colours. Beeping fills the air. There's so much information coming at you, it's easier to turn it off so you can concentrate on parking.
The coupe comes with a selection of engines, but it's the twin-turbo charged V6 diesel which sums up how clever the car is. As powerful and smoothly invigorating as a Turkish massage, the engine blows the cobwebs off every other diesel on the market.
All this comes at a price - £30,900. It's the most expensive Peugeot you can buy. This is the deep water of the prestige boys and though the coupe matches them stroke for stroke, I can't see many people deciding to fork out Mercedes money on a Peugeot.
So, to the missing keys... Someone revealed that the centre of the '0' in the 407 emblem was a concealed boot release. I popped it open, grabbed the keys and gave thanks for a design detail worth its weight in gold.
