Peugeot undercutting the MG4 with the e208? - No they aren't, I made a mistake!

[Rolfe]

I checked the price of the Peugeot e208 a couple of days ago, because I had one as a courtesy car, and I was curious. I had the higher-spec model with the reversing cameras. I didn't actually like the car much, to be honest. I didn't take a screen-shot, but in my memory the prices of the two models were about a grand apart, and around £32,000.

I went to re-check exactly what the price was this afternoon, again just out of curiosity, and got this.

That is some price reduction. There's a GT version at just over £25,000 as well. Looks as if MG has got some serious competition at the affordable end of the price range.

 

[Jomarkh]

These look like they are 'from' prices for petrol cars.

208 and e-208 | Buy Online at PEUGEOT UK

Buy a PEUGEOT 208 or e-208 online, with delivery to your door or local pickup. Choose an offer, customize your car and purchase securely. Easy car buying!

offers.peugeot.co.uk

 

[Ian Key]

The Active Premium+ 50kWh EV starts at £27618 and the Allure Premium+ 50kWh EV starts at £28486

 

[GaryMG4]

It does say electric available at the top of the ad, so I suspect these are ice versions.

 

[Rolfe]

Have I made a mistake then? Did I get the ICE equivalent when I reloaded the page? I'll try again.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, you're right. It's not at all clear which button to click on. Here's the page, just as it was when I saw it the other day.

Sorry, nothing to see here folks, as you were.

£33,000 for the wee box I was driving on Monday and Tuesday. Honestly.

 

[PristDean]

In a similar vein, the dealer my car is in with today, gave me a Vauxhall Corsa 1.2, 72 plate as a courtesy car. I have to say that I thought it was fun, nimble and a well behaved little car. Rode the bumps well, handled well and accelerated keenly. Interior was fine but a basic info system and a lot of scratchy plastic. Also, for £20 (took 30 seconds to fuel it), it gave me 200 miles on the GOM.

 

[NickHeynes]

I've currently got a cirtroen C4 diesel as a courtesy car while mine is in the body shop. Another driver let his door bang on the rear nearside quarter during the recent high winds. A pure accident and the guy was mortified. He was even more mortified when I told him that the estimate was for £1k !!.
Apparently Desire Red is a nightmare to match which means the entire rear door, rear quarter and bumper need to be painted.
Anyway , I digress. This Citroen is awful Yes its got all the bells and whistles and I quite like the look of the car but ... I thought my MG4 was idiosyncratic. The Android auto is awful ( I've given up trying to get Waze to work). . The "My citroen" app is terrible. And there are quite important buttons hidden in all sorts of nooks and crannies. What's worse is that it handles like a North Sea Ferry. And the seats are as flat as pancakes with virtually no side bolsters.
And going back to an ICE?! I tell you , I'll never buy an ICE car again. It's like stepping back in time! lol

 

[Rolfe]

That accident isn't so dissimilar to how I ended up giving up my previous car, a 14 yo Golf. A guy in a BMW came out of a side street and hit me, damaging two panels. At first he wanted to pay for it privately, but when I got an estimate of £1,600 he changed his mind. So it went through the insurance. At first my insurance said it was all fine, they'd get it repaired, but after taking it off to the body shop they changed their mind and said the car was uneconomic to repair, we're giving you £4,000, give back your courtesy car and go away.

The sums all seemed a bit odd, and I considered getting the car repaired and pocketing the difference (they were prepared to give me about £2,700 if I wanted to keep the car), but considering it also needed four new tyres and who knows what it would have cost to get it through its next MOT, I decided to cut and run after all. Especially when it turned out there was a blue MG4 SE SR wating to be picked up at the dealer.

Bodywork repairs are a shocker of a price. Even if you don't have a fancy tricoat paintwork.

Interesting to hear about the Citroen. I think an awful lot of cars have these sorts of problems and if you look on their forums you'll find out about them. The Peugeot I had wasn't that bad, but the drive was average and boring compared to the MG4, and there were an awful lot of piano keys all over the cluttered cockpit. I never did find out how to change which vents the aircon was coming through.

 

[Yandards]

Had an E208 GT prior to the MG4 for 2 years.

Not a bad car and at the time it was that, a Zoe (no good as you can't adjust the height of the driver's seat and the wiper arch was on my eyeline) or something a lot more expensive/ a lot less range.

Not a bad little car and less car side software issues despite having a fair amount of extras. Lane keep assist was a hard button that stayed off (profiles available though), cruise control stalk would let you flick between cruise limiter and is definitely better than going into the screen menus. A lot more interior lighting but all operated by waving your hand around as no buttons - very unreliable system.

That said the mobile app started off terrible and wasn't hugely improved over time. Very unstable despite running on vanilla Android devices (Pixels).
The service interval stuff had an error where it was kicking km values in mileage (never fixed in the entire time).
It ate front tyres (about 12k miles) as its front wheel drive despite running it in eco mode most of the time.
Also as its French they still can't fit wiring looms with adequate support so the rear ABS harness would chafe on the rear suspension resulting in an unsafe car and a month wait for a new harness.

As its an ICE/electric platform you lost a lot of the advantages a pure electric should provide in terms of extra space.

Heatpump didn't make the same racket as the AC pump does though

Also no spare wheel, it's the can of foam or a space saver for most these days - guess it shaves a few kg off the car for efficiency gains.

 

[Rolfe]

I had a lot of trouble trying to get the seat in a comfortable and practical position. You had to look over the tiny steering wheel, and it was an awkward exercise.

 

[Yandards]

I had a lot of trouble trying to get the seat in a comfortable and practical position. You had to look over the tiny steering wheel, and it was an awkward exercise.

I got used to the slightly different ergonomics of the steering wheel - it is a small wheel which feels a little odd a first too.

 

[Rolfe]

Probably my main issue with it was that it's a Fiesta/Polo class car, and I moved up to Golf-size cars 25 years ago. Into a Peugeot 306 GTi6, in fact. Now the smaller size seems small. But as a courtesy car it was perfectly adequate. The reasons I wouldn't have bought one aren't actually faults with the car, just that it doesn't tick my boxes.