Peugeot 308 SW GT Blue HDi 180
Price from £17,145
MPG 88.2
Top speed up to 132mph
When was the last time you hit the brakes? I mean really hit them? Stamped so hard that you might have kicked your foot through the floor? I don’t think I ever truly have… until last Sunday.
I really didn’t see the other guy. He was in a road-coloured Golf. (I’ve never understood why anyone thinks that a car the exact near-invisible shade of crumbling tarmac would be a good idea. It’s auto-camouflage. I say: “Ban grey cars!”) Anyway, it was his right of way, but blimey he was shifting. He hammered straight through the junction, oblivious of me or anything else. And there I was one moment cruising along, glancing to my right, left hand reaching for the gear stick, the next a reflection on the bonnet, a sense of movement in the corner of my eye… and from somewhere deep in my subconscious my body took over, like an airbag going off in my frontal lobe. Before I knew it my foot had shot out and I’d jumped on the brake pedal and… sickening noise of screeching rubber.
And that’s the thing about heavy braking – you only really think about how effective it is after it’s done its job and saved you. The car stopped almost instantly, burying its nose in the road like a race horse face planting over a Grand National fence. My wife lurched forward with such force she’s had a seatbelt-shaped bruise across her collarbone all week. The kids in the back screamed. Maps, sunglasses, coffee cups flew. But we stopped. And we missed him.
So I can tell you with complete assurance that the brakes on this Peugeot 308 SW GT work bloody well. The stopping power is provided by a Bosch 9CE unit which controls the effort across all four wheels – the 30mm-thick discs being gripped by the floating callipers with unshiftable 60mm pistons. Hopefully you’ll never need to test them for yourself.
What about going forward? The Peugeot 308 had quite a year in 2014. It was named European car of the year, so it makes a lot of sense for Peugeot to seize its moment with a performance GT model. The car comes in both hatchback and SW body styles – SW is Peugeot’s word for an estate. Both come with styling tweaks such as a revised lion on the bonnet, snazzy LED running lights, lacquered door mirrors, special 18in “Diamant” wheels (they’re heavily grooved so they look like you’ve graunched them along the kerb before you’ve even hashed up your parking).
The big points of the GT, however, are the chassis modification which creates a lower, more dynamic ride: lower = faster = cooler in car land; and the new series of mega-efficient, super-clean engines – the 1.6-litre BlueHDi 120 does an almost unbelievable 88.2 miles to the gallon with the merest whiff of CO2, just 85g per km.
Inside it feels pretty posh. Peugeot is determined to capture the high ground of the premium market and offers a penthouse interior and lavish gadgetry at (not quite) basement prices. The i-Cockpit works well – a single button and touchscreen replace the rash of controls you normally see breaking out on consoles. It’s clever and sophisticated stuff, but it wouldn’t have looked so good if that Golf had ploughed through the middle of it.
The chain gang
When Sir Bradley Wiggins made history yet again as he smashed the hour record, few people will have appreciated the attention to detail that went into the feat. But Muc-Off had more insight than most. It was the Dorset-based business who provided the chain for the attempt. In all they spent many hours and £6,000 perfecting the links for Wiggo’s ride. They started by grading 30 Shimano Dura-Ace chains on their specialist lab equipment. They then selected the fastest, most efficient chains which were then deep cleaned and treated with a groundbreaking new formula. This formula is essentially the world’s poshest lube and keeps friction to an absolute minimum. The equipment used to provide the quantitative data is called CLOD – Chain Lube Optimisation Dynamometer. And it was this know-how that helped Wiggo achieve his incredible record at the Lee Valley VeloPark – 54.526km (33.88 miles) in 60 minutes. Muc-off is more usually associated with bike-cleaning products, but I can’t imagine Brad bothered to clean his wheels after this ride.
Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166
