Peugeot 2008 Review & Prices

The Peugeot 2008 is a small SUV with a bold look, comprising strong colour schemes and a variety of slashes and creases that make alternatives such as the Volkswagen T-Cross look more than a little tedious.

If small SUVs are more rugged versions of small cars, then the Peugeot 2008 is a 208 that’s kitted out for a paintballing trip. It has the same great tech you get in the 208 hatch, but is better prepared for some diving about in the mud thanks to its chunkier styling and raised driving position. Brilliant. So good, in fact, it won the Best Small SUV category in 2021 carwow Car of the Year Awards.

And the French flair loses no momentum when you get inside. It has two massive infotainment screens and a bold design. Not to mention interior quality that feels up there with the best SUVs in this price range.

Those screens are worthy of special mention, though. The first is a fairly conventional centre touchscreen that is used to operate everything from the sat-nav to the heater.

The second screen is more interesting and replaces conventional instruments behind the steering wheel. It has a 3D effect with visible depth and it’s also fully customisable with slick animations when you switch between views. It’s a neat piece of kit no other car this price offers up.

Not many do better than the Peugeot for front-seat room. It will easily accommodate two tall adults and there’s plenty of scope to move the seat and steering wheel, though lumbar adjustment – which helps keep you comfy on long drives – isn’t even an option.

Tall passengers will have their knees brushing the front seats if they’re sitting behind someone else who’s tall. On the upside, there is plenty of head and foot room.

Hit the road and you’ll find the 2008 is a great all-rounder. Its steering is light in town, but weights up to give you more confidence at faster speeds. The slick six-speed manual gearbox (an eight-speed auto is optional) is the perfect match for the Peugeot’s sporty small steering wheel and, with little body lean to speak of, it’s a fun car to hustle about.

That’s particularly true if you choose one of the three PureTech petrol engines – the 130hp version being the pick of the bunch because it is both sprightly and cheap to run. Want to eke out as much fuel economy as possible? Then you’ll want the 100hp diesel that makes up for its noisy running with punchy performance yet great fuel economy.

But what makes the 2008 stand out from alternatives is its eye-catching styling that proves cheap-to-run and practical family cars can still be desirable. For that reason alone, it’s worth shortlisting against cars like the Seat Arona and VW T-Cross. And, of course, the 2008 is available as a fully-electric version. If you’re interested in that one, we have a full separate review of the battery-powered e-2008 right here.

If you’re sold on the idea, head over to our Peugeot deals pages for the best possible prices.

As with so many cars these days, the 2008 has some close mechanical relatives. In this case, they’re the Vauxhall Mokka and the Citroen C3 Aircross. The Mokka is the most closely related to the 2008, and shares all of its engines and, in the case of the electric versions, both cars have the same battery and electric motor. 

Not surprisingly, the 2008 is priced very close to the Mokka, with the Vauxhall being fractionally the cheaper car to buy. The C3 Aircross is a slightly more distant relative, but it does use much of the same mechanical package as the Peugeot, and it’s distinctly cheaper than the 2008 — by several thousand pounds in fact. Worth considering. All three cars are cheaper than a Ford Puma, but the 2008 is a little pricier than a Renault Captur.

In town

The 2008 has nice, light steering, although it does suffer from the traditional vague and notchy Peugeot manual gearchange. At low speeds, the brakes feel a touch grabby, so you need to train your right foot to be gentle with them or you’ll be headbanging the steering wheel. 

The big, thick windscreen pillars do create some annoying blind spots, and those aren’t helped by a huge rear view mirror that leaves only a narrow gap between it and the top of the infotainment screen to look out through. 

What you can’t fault is the 2008’s comfort — it’s properly French-car-comfy when it comes to soaking up bumps and lumps around town. It feels like a much bigger car in that respect — a feeling that’s enhanced because you sit up nice and high.

On the motorway

The 2008’s impressive performance continues on the motorway. It’s quiet and relaxing, and actually quite enjoyable to go on a long-distance run with. The little 1.2 engine also has plenty of punch, so it actually does surprisingly well when it comes to overtaking.

On a twisty road

Get off the motorway and onto roads with corners, and you’ll find the 2008’s trade-off for that comfy suspension. 

It’s quite soft and a bit ‘floaty’ and there’s a good bit of body lean when you go around bends. It grips quite well, and feels competent, and the traction control will step in and stop things getting out of hand. That said, it will skip and hop slightly if you hit a bad bump mid-corner. 

Really, the 2008 does exactly what you need a car such as this to do. But if you really want a tall-ish small SUV that’s properly fun to drive, you should probably be looking at the Ford Puma.

Practicality

The front of the 2008’s cabin is reasonably spacious, and the way the passenger-side dashboard is scalloped in means that there’s a little more knee-room on that side. 

For storage, there’s a nice lidded storage box in front of the gear lever, which can optionally have a wireless phone charging pad, and another open storage space just below that. 

There are two cupholders on the centre console — one deep, for bottles, and a shallow one for smaller coffee cups — and there’s a small storage box under the centre arm-rest, which has a tiny, kinda pointless, lift-out tray in it. Why? Nobody knows… 

The glovebox is also tiny, a common bugbear for UK-market Peugeots, because it has to share space with the fusebox. If you had a left-hand drive model, the glovebox would be twice the size. The door bins are decent, though, and can hold a big bottle of water.  

The door bins in the back are good too, and are actually almost the same size as those in the front. There are seat-back nets for storage, too.

Space in the back seats

There are ISOFIX points in the outer two back seats for child safety (and optionally you can have another set of points in the front passenger seat) but there are some niggles here.

First off, the door opening is quite narrow, so it can be a faff to squeeze a big seat in, while the ISOFIX anchors are covered with little zipped panels. That zip feels pretty flimsy and it’s likely to break if you’re using them a lot. Still, there’s enough space to load in a bulky rear-facing seat, which is good. 

Rear seat space is fine in terms of legroom and headroom for adults, but if you’re trying to fit three people across the back, the way the roof-line leans inwards means that those sitting in the outer seats will find their heads brushs the sides of the roof. The rear windows are quite shallow too, which means that kids won’t be able to see out quite so well.

Boot space

The 2008’s boot is really good, with 434 litres of available space on offer. You can fit a big suitcase, little suitcase, and a squashy bag; or you could easily fit in a big, folded-up baby buggy. 

There’s no load lip, so heavy items can be slid in and out easily, and the boot floor is adjustable to height if you really need to pack things in — plus, there’s even a nice, tactile metal handle for moving the boot floor. A nice touch. However, don’t bother looking for tie-down points, luggage hooks, or 12-volt sockets because they’re not there. 

The rear seats split-fold in a 60:40 ratio, and they do lie mostly flat (although there is a slight incline) but the 2008 has the Ford Puma beaten for seats-down space — 1,467-litres. 

Annoyingly, though, the rear seatbelts get caught and trapped very easily when you fold and unfold the rear seat. That wouldn’t happen in a Skoda Kamiq… However, what is very good is that the luggage cover fits under the adjustable boot floor when you’re not using it, which is so much better than leaving it at home.

If anything, the 2008’s interior is even more interesting than its striking exterior. You get a multi-layered dashboard, which is mostly made from very nice, soft-touch materials (although things do get a bit cheaper and scratchier as you go further down). 

Below the main touchscreen there’s a nice panel that has shortcut controls for the screen, as well as ‘hot keys’ for things like defrosting the windscreen and switching on the hazard lights. 

Some parts seem a bit cheaply built, but overall the 2008’s cabin looks and feels pretty expensive. 

One downside is the touchscreen itself, which has old-fashioned looking graphics and can be a bit laggy to respond to your touch. The reversing camera is pretty low-definition too, and makes the world outside look almost like a game of Minecraft… The Volkswagen T-Cross has a snazzier screen. 

You do get two USB sockets (one regular, one USB-C) in the front on all but the most basic models, and two more in the back. The digital instruments — again standard on everything but the base model, which gets analogue dials — are really nice, looking high tech and allowing you to choose from a swathe of different displays. 

The mix of high-set instruments with the tiny, low-set steering wheel looks pretty cool, and it can work for some drivers, but many will find that when they’re sitting comfortably, the top of the steering wheel cuts across the instruments.That’s annoying. 

What’s not annoying is that the doors wrap around under the sills of the car, so when you’re getting in and out, you won’t be putting stripes of road grim up the backs of your trousers.

The 2008 is a reasonably economical vehicle. We averaged 47mpg, driving the 130hp version of the 1.2-litre petrol engine. You won’t get much better economy from the cheaper 100hp version, because it does struggle with the car’s weight. 

The 155hp version is a bit thirstier (Peugeot claims a best figure of 46mpg, so you’re probably looking at 40mpg really) but it’s only available in the top-spec GT Premium model, so that’s not really worth considering anyway. A diesel will easily do 55mpg, but only really works from a cost perspective if you’re doing lots of long journeys every week. 

CO2 emissions start from as little as 113g/km for the diesel model, but to be honest the 1.2 petrol isn’t that far behind, rating at 121g/km for the 130hp version with a six-speed manual gearbox. Beware the eight-speed automatic, though, as that will add 10g/km to that figure, which pushes your first year VED rate up by £40. 

The 155hp engine sits in the same £220 road tax bracket, while you’ll pay £180 for either of the other 1.2-litre versions with a manual gearbox, or the same for the diesel thanks to the fact that it meets the latest Euro6 and RDE2 emissions tests. Meeting those tests means you also avoid ULEZ charges, at least for now. 

In company car tax terms, if you’re in the 20 per cent tax bracket, you’ll pay as little as £103 a month for a 100hp 1.2 petrol; or from £120 per month for the 130hp version. A diesel will cost you £114 per month, while the 155hp engine will set you back £165 per month.

The Peugeot 2008 is one of those cars that’s fallen foul of the way in which the independent crash test experts, EuroNCAP, tests cars for safety.

Basically, NCAP deducts points and star ratings if a car puts some key safety items on the options list, as Peugeot does. So, without the optional Safety Pack fitted, the 2008 scores only three stars for crash protection, but gets a four-star rating with it fitted. 

The way the car protects those sitting within it stays basically the same between the two, but the difference is seen in the way the 2008 protects other, vulnerable, road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. 

Basically, more expensive models get an improved camera-and-radar controlled emergency braking system, which is better at detecting those walking or on bikes, and that’s what NCAP wants to see. Quite rightly too, even if it does drive up the price you pay. 

All models get front driver and passenger airbags, as well as front side airbags, and full-length curtain airbags. Also standard is cruise control with a speed limiter, lane-keeping assistance for the steering, speed sign recognition, and hazard lights that automatically switch on when you brake hard. 

On the security front, there’s a standard Thatcham Category 1 alarm and immobiliser, as well as doors that lock automatically as you drive off.

Peugeot has done very well in recent reliability surveys, and the 2008 especially so, finishing in the top-15 of a recent major UK survey of owner satisfaction. The 1.2-litre engine is a well-proven unit, and is used across a wide variety of models, so there aren’t too many mysteries about it. 

Peugeot’s warranty isn’t all that generous, though. You get a basic three-year, 60,000-mile warranty as standard, although that can be extended out to 100,000-miles as a cost option, which for a 2008 will set you back around £220 or so. Peugeot offers an inclusive service plan, which costs £18 per month for petrol or diesel models. 

The current 2008 has been the subject of recalls, but they have been for minor issues, such as anti-corrosion protection on the front subframe, a blocked AdBlue injector on diesel models, and a loose rear shock absorber mounting bolt.