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We first drove the Peugeot 2008 in January of 2014. It didn’t particularly stand out and we weren’t that enamoured with its bland looks.

Fast forward to 2016 and the plucky 2008 has been given a facelift, couple that with a 1.2 turbo engine and the whole car is changed.

In Allure guise the 1.2 PureTech 130 S&S (catchy) starts at £18,470. But by the time our test mule was optioned up with Pearl Paint, £645, Sat Nav with Connect and SOS Assistance, £700, Park Assist, Reversing Camera, and Active City Brake the price was over £20k.

Exterior

Peugeot are now dubbing the 2008 an ‘SUV’ that should be put into inverted commas though, as it’s probably the loosest wording of the term Sports Utility Vehicle ever. It’s not really sports, it’s not really utility (although it has a bigish boot), so it’s one out of three…a vehicle.

Opting for Allure trim is your best bet, it sits in the middle of the range and gives you the butch side cladding around the arches. You also get chrome around the windows and on the bold new grille.

The dark shadow chrome effect looks far nicer than the bright shiny stuff that adorned the original 2008.

I can’t get over how much beefier the 2008 looks with its cladding and meaner grille. The front of the car is less sloped, much more cut off in its appearance. It gives it road presence now, a car transformed.

Drive

With it’s 130 BHP turbo’d lump the plucky 3 cylinder gets to 62 in 9.3 seconds. Pretty nippy for a car of this size, but it’s rather lightweight at 1160 KG.

Over 370 mixed miles we managed 40.8 MPG. The Urban rating is quoted at 47.1, so expect about 45 MPG on average.

130 BHP was plenty of power in the 2008. It never felt left wanting and always kept up with the pace of things. The three cylinder sounding a little thrummy at higher RPM but overall noise was kept to a minimum in the cabin.

Steering is a little twitchy to turn in, it feels quite dead of centre…but add more lock and it gets a bit airy fairy, better weighting at speed would help. On the whole the steering is rather devoid of any sensation, knowing where the front wheels are is largely guesswork.

The 17 inch alloys on the Allure spec knock the potholes a bit harder than some of the chunkier tyred options, but the arches look far better fitting than the lower spec models.

Its five speed manual box can be a bit notchy, with the gears being quite far apart you can sometimes hit the middle ground. A tightened up shift would have been nice for this facelift.

Interior

On the inside the 2008 pretty much stays the same. It has the same dash layout, centrally mounted touch screen and dinky steering wheel.

The main change is the textured plastic across the dash and on the door handles. It’s a sort of speckled grey with a slight glittery tinge. It’s way better than gloss black that gets scratched to hell in a matter of weeks. Maybe this is the ‘utility’ aspect Peugeot are referring to.

There are also some funky new seats on Allure trim, they are covered in netting type material which looks awesome and seems incredibly hard wearing.

Looking up from the rear seats and you get some geometric roof moulding, that just adds a little bit of character to the interior.

Rear headroom is great thanks to the stepped up roof, but legroom is nearly the same as in the 208 so a little cramped for adults.

Boot space is 360 litres so only up 49 litres on the 208, but you can store an extra 22 litres under the flat load space that is the boot floor.

Conclusion

Second time around and we really loved the 2008. It now stood out amongst the crowd thanks to the fresh exterior changes and the nippy little 1.2 PureTech engine.

Allure trim and this engine is probably the pick of the range, it balances the right power and economy whilst the Allure spec gives you the beefier side arches, smarter grille and satin chrome.

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