Review: Peugeot 5008

Just before Christmas, the rather nice people at Peugeot got in touch and asked if we’d like to try out the Peugeot 5008 compact MPV.

As it happened, I was planning a day trip to the Warner Bros Studio Tour with Flea and two of her friends, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to put a family car through its paces. You can read more about our day at Hogwarts in the Snow here.

• Would the 5008 have enough room for three kids in the back seat?
• Would it be comfortable to drive all the way from Lancashire to Hertfordshire?
• Would there be enough storage for all the loot Flea was planning to buy in the gift shop?

First things first:

The 5008 is a seven-seater family car. There are three seats in the back of the car, and a further row of two seats behind them – in reality they’re only really suitable for children, but if you’re a large family looking for seven seats without driving a MASSIVE vehicle, I think this would be worth a look.

What’s it like to drive?

The fuel economy is reasonable – we got around 38mpg from our diesel vehicle, and it was reasonably responsive on the motorway when I put my foot down, although I found the car felt a bit wavy at higher speeds, so I was careful not to go too fast. Our current car gives around 50mpg so I was hoping for a bit more from the Peugeot, perhaps.

The dashboard is clear, and there’s a whizzy little plastic screen that pops up and has your speed projected on it – I guess so you can keep your eye on the road without looking down to check your speed.

The driver’s seat has a nicely elevated position and the dashboard is clear and logical. There are lots of cubby holes to store things but I found the driver’s storage a bit weird, to be honest – to the left of the drivers seat is a big, cooled storage box – but I found things very easy to lose and very hard to find in there, particularly while you’re driving. I’d have preferred the coffee cup holder to be further forward and have a smaller storage cubby, given the choice.

The 5008 has good parking sensors and I found the car really easy to park, thanks to the rear-view camera. The stereo system is fine, and there’s a USB Connector so you can plug in a smartphone and stream music – although the connection was a bit dodgy on ours and needed plugging in and disconnecting a few times before it recognised all the music on my iPhone.

What’s it like for the passengers?

My three passengers were all very enthusiastic about the 5008 – particularly once they realised the folks at Peugeot had hidden various treats in storage compartments around the car. There was a selfie stick in the front seat cubby, some toy cars in the driver’s seat and front passenger seat rear pockets, a book in the glove compartment, and sweets in the pull-out tray under the driver’s seat and the storage compartments in the floor in front of the rear seats. Genius.

The middle row of seats comfortably fitted three 9 year olds, and they loved the tray tables, pull down drink holders, and reclining seats. They also had a lot of fun with the individual pull-up sun shades fitted to each window – a really thoughtful touch in a family car.

I liked that the childproof locks and windows are controlled by a button on the driver’s seat door, so I could be confident nobody would accidentally fall out of the car at high speed!

Each of the seats can be moved independently to maximise the boot space – which is pretty impressive when you’re in the five seater mode – although you’ll struggle to fit more than a couple of gym bags in there with the extra seats raised. According to the manual there’s 679 litres of capacity with 7 seats in place, and 2,500 if you fold all the rear seats down.  All the seats in the second and third row fold completely flat, so it’s made for IKEA runs.

Any downsides? 

Overall, I felt the Peugeot was a reasonably solid drive around town, and on the motorway except for at higher speeds in wind. It does offer the rare combination of feeling spacious and compact. But the in-built sat nav was an excercise in frustration – I never worked out how to enter a postcode, which is fine driving somewhere like the Warner Bros Studio, which is signposted from the motorway, but shorter trips involved using the sat-nav to direct us towards a town, and then using my phone to direct us to an actual address. Not ideal.

Overall

The Peugeot 5008 is probably the most spacious car I’ve driven at this price point, and I think for a seven-seater it offers a spacious ride with lots of storage options. Just make sure someone walks you through using the in-built sat-nav before you buy!

Oh, and it’s impossible to get three nine-year-olds to sit nicely in the back of a review car and pose for a photo. FACT.

Disclosure: We were loaned a Peugeot 5008 for the purposes of this review, Peugeot also covered the cost of our day trip to Warner Bros Studio Tour.