It’s been around for 16 years now and was once awarded the European Car Of The Year title. Overshadowed by its plug-in hybrid (PHEV) sibling, can the Peugeot 308 GT hold its ground against the onslaught of hybrid hatchbacks and SUVs?
We took a 308 GT for a week’s testing and included a trip from Wellington to Auckland to see if a small-medium hatchback can still be a comfy ride on a 600km drive, covering over 1,000km in our testing.
What We Like and Dislike About The 2022 Peugeot 308 GT
| What We Like | What We Don’t Like |
| Styling, especially in Olivine Green Ride quality Engine character, torque Driving dynamics Good equipment levels Steering wheel feel Steering wheel controls Seat comfort Handling overall (optional) audio system | A little underpowered Rear passenger space Slight hesitation off the mark Tyre noise on coarse-chip seal |
What’s In The 2022 Peugeot 308 Range?
You can get your 308 in either of three models;
- Allure $46,990
- GT $51,990 (tested)
- GT PHEV $74,990
The Allure and GT run the standard 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder turbocharged petrol PureTech engine, which puts out 96kW of power and a decent 230Nm of torque. Both are front-wheel drive and have an 8-speed automatic transmission.
The GT PHEV is a plug-in hybrid model, and uses a 1.6-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-petrol motor that manages 132kW of power and 250Nm of torque. It’s also front-wheel drive and with the same 8-speed automatic. Added to this is an 81kW electric motor which outputs 320Nm of torque. Its battery capacity is 12.4kWh for an EV-only range of 61km. Combined with the petrol engine, the total power for the PHEV model is 165kW and torque is listed at 360Nm.
2022 Peugeot 308 Standard Equipment Highlights
- Tyre pressure monitoring
- Adaptive cruise control with stop/go and speed limiter
- Rear cross traffic alert
- Lane Keep Assist and Road Edge Assist
- Driver Attention Alert
- Forward Collision Warning
- Speed Limit and Traffic Sign Recognition
- Long Range Blind Spot Monitoring
- LED headlights
- ‘Saber Design’ LED DRLs with integrated LED indicators
- High beam assist
- Automatic lights and wipers
- Wecome & Follow Me Home lighting
- 17” alloy wheels
- Tinted rear windows
- Leather steering wheel
- Ambient lighting
- Rear air vents
- Keyless entry and start
- Dual-zone AC
- Heated and power folding exterior mirrors
- Electric park brake with hill start assist and LED courtesy lighting
- Frameless auto-dimming interior mirror
- One-touch power windows (4)
- 10” configurable 2D cluster
- 10” configurable centre screen
- Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
Stepping up to the GT model adds:
- Full LED Matrix headlights with auto adjustment
- Rear full LED ‘Claw effect’ taillights
- 18” diamond cut alloy wheels
- Lion logo on front wings
- Front & side lower body sills
Buying the $5,000 Premium Pack adds:
- Black Nappa lather trim with black stitching
- AGR driver’s eat with electric adjustment, 2-position memory and adjustable nose cushion
- Heated front seats with multi-point massage function and electric lumbar adjust
- Focal premium audio with 10 speakers
- Puncture repair kit
Other than a few EV-specific items like a charging cable, the GT PHEV is equipped to the same level as the GT.
Our Review Vehicle’s Optional Equipment
- Power Sunroof $2,990
- GT Premium Pack $5,000
Including the optional equipment, our review car’s retail price is $59,980.
The new 308 comes in 6 colours;
- Olivine Green
- Nera Black
- Cumulus Grey
- Elixir Red
- Pearl White
- Vertigo Blue
Olivine Green is at no charge, but Nera Black and Cumulus Grey carry a $550 premium. If you want Elixir Red, Pearl White or Vertigo Blue, that will cost an extra $950.
For a full list of specs and options available for the Peugeot 308 GT, head on over to the Peugeot New Zealand website.
How Does The 2022 Peugeot 308 GT Compare To Its Competition?
All prices below exclude the refund or additional cost of the New Zealand Clean Car Programme.
| Make/ Model | Engine | Power/ Torque kW/Nm | Seats | Fuel L/100km | Boot Space litres | Price (excl CCP) |
| Mercedes-Benz A180 Hatch | 1.3-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 100/200 | 5 | 5.7 | 355 | $60,200 |
| BMW 118i M Sport Hatch | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 103/220 | 5 | 6.3 | 380 | $58,990 |
| Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce | 1.7-litre 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 177/340 | 5 | 5.8 | 350 | $52,990 |
| Peugeot 308 GT | 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder turbo-petrol | 96/230 | 5 | 5.2 | 412 | $51,990 |
| Audi A1 35 TFSI S Line | 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 110/250 | 5 | 5.4 | 335 | $51,690 |
| VW Golf TSi R-Line | 1.4-litre 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 110/250 | 5 | 5.8 | 381 | $47,990 |
| Seat Leon Sportstourer | 1.5-litre 4-cylinder turbo-petrol | 110/250 | 5 | 4.9 | 470 | $44,490 |
First Impressions Of The 2022 Peugeot 308 GT
I think if there’s one word that sums up our test car, that word would be ‘stunning’. Finished in Olivine Green, this car turned heads everywhere I went, and I don’t mean that lightly. Approaching someone, you would see their eyes follow the car as it went past. The exterior design of the new 308 and that colour look simply amazing as a combo. I guess ‘amazing’ is the second word for it.
The swage lines on the side fit the design perfectly, those huge front daytime running lights running into them. The GT model comes with the lower side skirts and I think this would sway me to pay the extra for the GT, as they really make the car look that much more sporty. Flared guards, tinted rear window, nicely designed alloys and a fantastic colour makes this car stand out.
At first, I was a bit cautious about the new lion badges on the car as they are, well, big. After a day or two they grew on me, and while I generally poo-poo a new badge design as change for the sake of change, those lion badges are particularly classy. Love them. There’s one on each front guard, one on the front grille and another on the boot, so there’s no missing them.
What’s The Interior Like In The 2022 Peugeot 308 GT?
Everyone comments on the tiny steering wheel pretty much in any Peugeot these days. It’s all down to Peugeot’s ‘heads-up dashboard’ which is another way of saying the dashboard is really high up. To make this work, the steering wheel is small and low. If you try raising it as far as it will go, you’ll be blocking half the dashboard. Best to leave it low and within a day you are used to it, and it is ‘safer’. It means you have the car’s speed and all other info right there at eye level. Not as good as a proper heads-up display, but it works very well.
The steering wheel itself is flat-bottomed, leather-wrapped and perforated, with a stylish metal ‘GT’ badge at the bottom. It’s a thing of beauty and feels great to the touch. Due to its tiny size, getting into any other car after the 308 feels like you are driving a bus.
Our test car had an optional electric sunroof with a manual blind. Open-road cruising will see some buffeting, but it’s not too bad since the car has a pop-up wind deflector. The glass part of the sunroof only goes back around halfway, so it’s not fully opening. For $3K extra, I don’t think it’s worth it.
This new 308 has changed its gear lever to a small, electric gear selector. It’s simple to use, although it can feel like a long reach at times. To the right of this is a button for Park and another for Manual mode. Once in manual mode, you can use the steering wheel paddles to change gears.
Overall, the interior of the 2022 Peugeot 308 GT feels classy and sporty. There’s green stitching on the console, dash, steering wheel and doors, and it looks excellent. The seats have light grey stitching on them. It’s still pretty dark inside with lots of black to be seen, so best to leave the sunshade open for some natural light.
Still in the front, the door bins are felt lined but only along the bottom edge. A shame as my drink bottle did rattle around on that long trip to Auckland. The centre console cubby is felt-lined too, and it’s surprisingly big and deep. The centre cubby has a light, an AC air vent to stop your chocolates from melting, and a hole to run a USB cable through to your phone. The glovebox gets the felt treatment as well, and it’s a medium to large size. Very usable compared to the last model.
Passengers in front get access to one USB-C port and a 12-volt socket for your dashcam, with another smaller cubby inside of the centre console and a ledge for your cellphone on top. I honestly thought the top ledge was a wireless charging pad, but it isn’t and neither is the one under the ledge. The USB-C port for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is at the front of the centre console, so you’ll need to plug in there to use those features. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are supported, although I couldn’t get Apple CarPlay to work wirelessly at all.
Rear legroom is average for the class if a little on the tight side, and the same goes for headroom. While the 308 is a hatchback, it does have a sporty drop in height moving to the back of the car, affecting headroom. There are two USB-C ports for rear-seat passengers, as well as some air vents. The rear seats split 60/40.
The boot is reasonably generous in size at 412 litres, expanding to an excellent 1,323 litres with the seats down. Since our test car had the Premium Pack, that meant there is no spare under the floor as this space is taken up with a subwoofer.
What’s The 2022 Peugeot 308 GT Like To Drive?
We love the sporty little 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder turbo petrol engine used in lots of Peugeot and Citroen models. It’s the same engine that’s in the 2022 308 GT, and it’s still a gem. It has that unique triple-cylinder sound to it, and can be a little intrusive – especially up some of Transmission Gully’s big hills – but its occasional vocalness is forgiven with the sound it makes and its overall performance. It’s just so damn torquey around town, always ready to go.
On the slight downside, there can be some hesitation in the gearbox to pick a gear when you want to get moving from a stop, meaning you sometimes need to make allowance that there can be a slight delay when you want to go. It will be interesting to see how it goes on our 600km drive to Auckland later in the week.
While using the car as a commuter, I came to appreciate lots of the little features that make the car an almost perfect choice as a Daily Driver. All the windows are automatic up/down, something I always prefer. The front windows are laminated, and that along with the quietness of the engine on the motorway at a steady throttle means the inside of the car is a very quiet place. As mentioned, it can get a little noisy up steep hills, but overall the engine is quiet, and road, tyre and wind noise are well controlled. Well, almost. The 308 GT is fitted with Michelin’s Primacy tyres and we’ve found these to be excellent all-around tyres – except on coarse-chip seal. The 308 GT succumbs to this too, and coarse-chip seal is not its friend for tyre noise.
Still on that Daily Drive, there’s a 180-degree parking camera and a simple-to-use central screen. The responsiveness of the screen is more than acceptable, and you’ll be a whiz at it in no time at all. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, and while this is stated as working wirelessly, I couldn’t get that to work at all, so always used a USB cable. The screen’s width is perfect for Apple CarPlay usage, and I found this a joy to use on that road trip to Auckland.
There are touch buttons on a lower panel for Screen Mirroring (CarPlay, Android Auto), Phone, SatNav, Media, and AC controls. The main screen is well sorted with a variety of home screen options, and you can also customise the home screen to display the shortcuts of things you use the most. On the slightly negative side of things, the screen is angled back a little and the panel with the buttons for AC etc is angled upwards, and both of these show fingerprints all over. With touchscreens becoming so commonplace, fingerprints are almost unavoidable but the angle of the screen and the touch panel in the 308 GT means those are more pronounced. Most people won’t care, or you can simply carry a microfibre cloth for an occasional wipe-down.
It was time to hit the road to Auckland, so early one morning we set out for our 600km drive. I’d already driven 325km around Wellington for a fuel consumption of 7.1L/100km, so I was keen to see how far this would drop when you include an open-road trip.
I was very happy to see adaptive cruise control fitted to the car, with a speed limiter as well. Even better, these are not controlled by Peugeot’s normal stalk behind the steering wheel and instead are managed by buttons on the steering wheel. These are nicely laid out, with the bottom left button for the speed limiter, and the bottom right for adaptive cruise. In between these two is a pause/resume button (for both), making things all very simple. The 308 GT also has now integrated traffic sign recognition (TSR) into the system, so you can double-tap the ‘OK’ button to change your adaptive cruise (or speed limiter) to the current speed limit. Even better, the traffic sign recognition worked very well. We’ve had a run of cars lately (from many brands) where it has not, but the 308 GT’s TSR was almost faultless.
On the long, early morning drive North, I cranked up the sounds. While it’s only in the Premium Pack, that 10-speaker Focal audio system is very good. I wouldn’t say excellent, but the overall quality of sound is great for a long roadie. I can’t recall what the base audio is like in the 308, however, that Focal system is worthy.
I made it to Bulls before realising it was time to gas up. I had driven a total of 485km in the 308 GT and noted that like many turbo-petrol motors, it needs 95-octane fuel. Topping it up and now doing some open road driving, the range was showing as 840km, a big difference from driving around town.
A revelation on that long drive were the seats; comfy and so very soft. I was reminded of the Citroen C3’s seats, which look and feel the same. Around town or on a long trip, they are excellent. Side support could be a little better on the twisty stuff, but overall they are top-notch.
The open road is a great place to test out an engine. While plenty of torque is a boon around town, passing slower traffic on the open road requires more power than torque. This is where the 1.2-litre engine of the 308 struggled at times. It runs out of puff at the top end, meaning you will need to plan your overtaking manoeuvres in advance, or simply wait for the next passing lane. Sometimes I used the steering wheel paddles to force the car up a gear so it would use more of that low-end torque, and this certainly helped.
I did use Sport mode on occasion, and it makes the 308 GT more responsive and eager, and you can even turn on a fake engine noise that only works in Sport mode. I couldn’t notice much difference between on or off, so left it off. Whenever you start the 308, it reverts to Normal drive mode, and a nice touch here is that Sport mode will make the whole dash turn red, Normal is green and Eco mode switches it to blue.
At lunch, I downloaded the Peugeot app for my phone and added the test car to it. You can’t do much with the app as far as ‘controlling’ the car goes, it’s more about booking a service, checking your recent trips and finding where you parked the car. I was hoping for more functionality, like turning on the AC early to cool the interior down, but at the moment, the app is more passive than active.
Time to play with the dashboard. You get to pick from five different options for this, so while the dash isn’t customisable, it doesn’t really need to be. One of the options minimises the speedo and rev counter down to allow an almost full-screen map for SatNav, while others are more minimal to keep your focus on your speed. There’s something for everyone here. I found it a little strange that the engine temperature gauge reads right to left (the fuel gauge reads left to right) but after a while, my brain got used to it.
Right across the top of the dash is a silver piece of trim that reflects in most lights. Initially, I thought the windscreen was dirty. Not the end of the world, but while the silver trim looks pretty, it can be distracting when it’s reflected in the windscreen.
Across the Desert Road and the 308 GT’s lane keep assist was being a bit too overbearing. I found a way to turn this off with three clicks on the touchscreen. Due to ANCAP safety requirements, this (and any other safety systems) will turn itself back on again when you next start the car.
One outstanding feature of the new 308 is the ride – it is simply excellent. It rides better than a small car should and is as good as you’d expect a French car to be. In this segment, the 2022 Peugeot 308 sets the bar very high for ride quality.
How does the 308 GT handle some twisty bits? Overall, very well. It can roll a bit with that soft suspension but the grip remains. It’s fairly sure-footed and composed but the steering could do with some more feel, especially since this is the GT model. Some repeated undulations will see it take a little bit to settle back down, but it will handle most drivers’ demands easily. It responds well to the gas pedal; use it well and at the right times, and you will be rewarded with a satisfying drive.
Eventually, we made it to Auckland, having covered a total of 1,005km in the little 308 GT. I loved this little car on that long drive north, and would happily do it all over again. Our fuel consumption for the test was 6.5L/100km, a little higher than the 5.2L/100km that Peugeot suggests and also a little high for a 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder car. But still, got to love that motor!
2022 Peugeot 308 GT – Specifications
| Vehicle Type | 5-door, small-medium hatchback |
| Starting Price | $51,990 |
| Price as Tested | $59,980 |
| Engine | 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder turbo petrol with start/stop |
| Power, Torque kW/Nm | 96/230 |
| Transmission | 8-speed automatic |
| Spare Wheel | Pump only |
| Kerb Weight, Kg | 1,288 |
| Length x Width x Height mm | 4367x1859x1441 |
| Boot Space / Cargo Capacity, Litres (seats up/seats down) | 412/1,323 |
| Fuel tank capacity, litres | 52 |
| Fuel Economy, L/100km | Advertised Spec – Combined – 5.2 Real-World Test – Combined – 6.5 Low Usage: 0-6 / Medium Usage 6-12 / High Usage 12+ |
| Towing Capacity Kg, unbraked/braked | 600/1,200 |
| Turning circle metres | 11.3 Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+ |
| Warranty | 5-year warranty 5-years Roadside Assistance |
| Safety information | ANCAP Rating – 5 stars – Link (old model) Rightcar.govt.nz – 4 Stars – NEW308 |
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