Reviews
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Peugeot is about to drop a small but powerful explosive device into the hot-hatch market with its new 308 GTi 270. Stand well back.
WHAT IS IT? A WRC car for the road… well not really, but the Peugeot 308 GTi does feel a bit like that when you’re slurping up its gushing turbo rush. Peugeot has miraculously produced a 1.6-litre engine that can make 200kW, and that throws you at 100km/h in six seconds. It makes the less powerful VW GTI Performance, with its 2.0-litre engine, look a bit lame.
WHY WE’RE TESTING IT Because this is the latest and greatest thing in hot-hatch world, and has technology – from its tricky limited-slip diff to its specifically powerful engine – that moves the goalposts or repaves the playing field for this segment.
THE WHEELS VERDICT We’ve only tried the 308 GTi 270 on a race track, but that certainly gave us the opportunity to see how hard it can push, and we were impressed. This is a seriously quick, extremely capable car that somehow manages to get all that power to the road without being squirrelly to drive. Another excellent hot-hatch effort from Peugeot.
PLUS: Power; fuel economy; handling; that diff; seats; interior; engine technology. MINUS: Exterior styling could be more exciting; limited supply; no road drive yet; we have to wait until February.
Even a basic understanding of specific power also tells us that extracting 200kW from a 1.6-litre engine requires the kind of magic only available to motorsport teams, who accept that their high-strung machines simply go bang now and then.
And yet here we are, flying around Sydney Motorsport Park in the new Peugeot 308 GTi 270 (the power figure in horsepower, which sounds even more absurd). It is running 2.5 bar of pressure through its specially developed twin-scroll Borg Warner turbo, and it doesn’t appear to be exploding. Not literally, anyway.
With a specific power rating that Peugeot is happy to claim is in supercar territory and, with a kerb weight of 1205kg sustaining a 6kg per kW power-to-weight ratio, impressive performance is no surprise. Frankly, the 0 to 100km/h time of six seconds flat seems surprisingly high.
What’s more surprising is that we’re not struggling with bone-wrenching torque steer, or complaining about woeful push understeer through corners.
This is largely thanks to one of the cleverest limited slip differentials we’ve ever had the pleasure of torture-testing, developed by the gurus at Peugeot Motorsport and previously seen on the giant-killing 208 GTi 30th Anniversary.
It’s so good that you can get on the throttle far earlier than in the non-diff-equipped 208 GTi we’d flung around the track earlier, and make the absolute most of all that power.
After strengthening the engine block to deal with the punishment it was about to apply, Peugeot Motorsport also waved its magic wand over the chassis, the power steering, the manual (only, hurrah!) gearbox and the brakes. The result is a car that the local office was confident enough to let people belt hell out of on one of Australia’s faster tracks, all day long, and big smiles on the faces of those who did so.
The 308 GTi 270 (a mildly less exciting 250 version is also available, and cuts 0.2 of a second off your 100km/h dash) really is a modern marvel, a front-wheel-drive, 1.6-litre car with a supposed fuel figure of 6.0 litres per 100km that’s actually great fun around a track.
I can’t wait to try it on the road, when supplies start arriving in February. Some 70 per cent of orders so far are for the 270, at $49,990 while the 250 is just $44,990.
Model: Peugeot 308 GTi 270 Engine: 1598c, turbo in-line 4 Max power: 200kW @ 6000rpm Max torque: 330Nm @ 1900rpm-5500rpm Transmission: 6-speed manual Kerb weight: 1290kg 0 – 100km/h: 6.0sec Fuel economy: 6.0L/100km Price: $49,990 Available: February, taking orders now
