Peugeot 308 GTi 270 2016 Review

Peugeot 308 GTi 270
First Australian track drive
Sydney Motorsport Park

Peugeot has turned up the heat on the hot-hatch segment with its new 308 GTi, which has been pumped up, pimped out and power crazed by the team at Peugeot Motorsport. With 200kW and 330Nm from a 1.6-litre engine, aided by a turbocharger with boost pressure turned up to 11, it could and should be a bit of a monster to drive, but Citroen claims its hugely clever limited-slip diff can tame the savage beast. A racetrack sounds like a good place to find out.

On paper, Peugeot's new 308 GTi simply shouldn’t work. What it's proposing is a turbocharged 1.6-litre engine with substantial 200kW and 330Nm outputs, all of which is pumped through the front wheels alone, an equation that would tend to suggest owners will also need to shell out for shoulder-replacement surgery.

Let’s start with the engine, which just seems a little unlikely, with its specially developed Borg Warner twin-scroll turbocharger turned up to 2.5 bar. The claimed kW-per-litre figure alone puts it in what Peugeot likes to call the supercar class when it comes to specific power output.

The 270 horsepower gives its name to the up-spec version of the GTi (a slightly cheaper and less scary 250 variant will also be available, with 'just' 184kW), which can apparently give you  maximum torque  from 1900rpm to 5500rpm (the 250 has the same 330Nm, but runs out of grunt at 4000rpm).

This freakish 1.6, which has — like the rest of the car — been heavily tweaked by the team at Peugeot Motorsport, can also allegedly deliver an economy figure of 6.0L/100km and a 0-100km/h time of six seconds flat (6.2 for the 250).

Compare this to the VW Golf GTI Performance, with 169kW from its 2.0-litre engine, and you start to see just how radical an idea this is.

If all these figures are true (and in a post-Dieselgate world you’d reckon they would be), it’s surely going to be an unwieldy, torque-steering bastard of a thing to drive.

This would be assumption if you knew nothing of its limited-edition little brother, the 208 GTi 30th Anniversary, which was also bewitched to do impossible things by the French boffins, mainly due to the fitment of their ingenious limited-slip Torsen differential.

Put simply, this diff seems to have banished the idea of understeer to the cesspit of history, and has reduced torque steer to a very occasional annoyance.

Sure enough, the 308 GTi 270 we were given a taste of at Sydney Motorsport Park was fitted with this same diff, except that it’s been specifically tuned for this car by the Peugeot Motorsport engineers, who also heavily worked the standard 308’s chassis, tuned the power steering, reinforced and strengthened the engine block and built a special manifold to survive all of the heat being generated and help produce a more satisfying howling noise.

Peugeot Australia, which says it’s already had customers slapping down money for this car (70 per cent of them going for the 270 option, even when they thought it was going to cost over $50K), cleverly brought along a standard 208 GTi and the wondrous 30th Anniversary, which we drove in that order before being allowed in the new beast.

Customer versions haven’t arrived yet — Peugeot expects deliveries to start around February — but you will be able to get the slick looking 'redback' versions. These look fantastic, just like the 30th Anniversary 208, but the 308 GTi also looks pretty great in blue, with its wild red chin spoiler contrasting brilliantly.

The interior is all perforated leather with red stitching and, sadly, the modern Pug approach of covering the instruments with the tiny steering wheel so that your speed become something that you feel rather than something you can actually see.

On the plus side, the sports seats are superb — supportive without being overly hard, and able to hold you upright through the hardest cornering.

The difference the diff makes is immediately clear when swapping up the 208 range, with the massaged version being able to power its way out of corners so well that you can get on the throttle a lot earlier, with no fear of having your arms tugged off.

The 208, of course, only has 156kW, so you’d expect the 308 GTi to be something more of a handful, and it is, but only in the sense that it throws you between corners a lot sooner, shortens straights and applies even more G-force mid-bend.

It also sounds properly sporty and even a little bit wild, for a hot hatch. True, it doesn’t sound as good as the one used in the TV  commercial for this car, which features a crazed monkey and what appears to be a Ferrari exhaust sample, but it’s pretty damn good, with a turbo whistle that’s more like a robot sucking up coconuts through a straw.

What it doesn’t do is misbehave, or push on early through corners, or bother you with intrusive traction control. The diff is simply so clever at supplying the torque -- and significant amounts of it — to the wheel with the most grip that it handles whatever you throw at it, even at track speeds, with aplomb.

If I think back to what the original Mazda3 MPS, or any Saab with a decent engine, was like, it’s hard to believe how far powerful front-wheel drive cars have come. There was a time when you’d never consider buying one over a fun rear-driver if you were a purist, but now you’d be mad not to.

We never get quite enough laps on these launches to find out where the limits are, but it seems like you’d have to push pretty hard to find them, and the brakes show no signs of suffering under the punishment, either.

Peugeot had tipped that this smoking-hot hatch would hit the market at somewhere between $50,000 and $55,000, but then the local office might have gone away and had a look at the competitors’ pricing, because it’s actually launched at $44,990 for the 250 version and $49,990 for the 270.

Considering the performance you’re getting, it really is a bit of a bargain.

Indeed, on paper, it’s hard to believe it all adds up -- those numbers from that tiny engine, for that price -- but the 308 GTi somehow defies what we know to be possible and makes it real, and a real hoot at that.

Peugeot 308 GTi 270 pricing and specifications:
Engine: 1.6-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder
Power: 200kW at 6000rpm
Torque: 330Nm over 1900-5500rpm
Fuel: 6.0L/100km (NEDC)
CO2: 139g/km (NEDC)

Also consider:
Volkswagen Golf GTI Performance (from $41,990)
Renault Megane RS 275 Trophy (from $52,990)
Mini John Cooper Works (from $47,400)