Car UK May 2019

76 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | MAY 2019

3-series vs the world

176bhp/163lb ft, plus an e-motor with 118bhp/149lb ft, nickel-metal hydride

battery and a CVT gearbox. The ES weighs at least 140kg more than the

BMW, but promises a comparable 50-ish mpg.

The ES is a mixed drive. There’s vigorous acceleration out of junctions,

it’s relaxing to slip around town silently when EV mode kicks in, and

it makes a decent job of cornering at modest speeds. But this is not a car

that indulges quicker progress, with howls of protest when accelerating

to motorway speeds, a fuzzy relationship between paddleshift inputs and

simulated gears, steering that feels artificial and lacks convincing feedback,

and a front end that goes full Amphicar when driven more aggressively.

You’d perhaps forgive this if there were exceptional refinement at a

gentler pace, but it’s nothing special. This might be because, along with

larger wheels, F Sports get Adaptive Variable Suspension, not the Dynamic

Control Shocks of its siblings. The default ride quality is a busy jiggle like

mild airplane turbulence, but you can also select Sport S+ that simulates

a space-shuttle breaking up on re-entry; I cannot imagine any scenario in

which an ES driver will find this useful. There’s also a good deal of road

noise, particularly on coarser surfaces.

Perhaps top-spec, more laid-back Takumi trim better suits the ES, but in

F Sport it’s neither dynamic nor refined enough to stay in contention here.

The Peugeot 508 makes a more convincing alternative. Despite fielding

top-spec GT trim, Peugeot has provided the cheapest car in this test at

£36,439 as a 178bhp 2.0-litre turbodiesel. Even with £2.5k of options it’s still

more affordable than a naked BMW, and chances are you’d only want the

£575 metallic paint anyway.

Visually it gets off on the right foot with a design that recalls Peugeot’s

greatest hits with an avant-garde, modernist twist – frameless door glass,

coupe-like body, fantastic fangs slashing down from the headlights. It’s

also a practical shape, with enough room for four 6ft-tall adults, and a

hatchback rear that opens to reveal 487 litres of space and a best-on-test

gong – yes, somehow more capacious than the Lexus.

The interior has a similar confidence to the exterior, with a look

that brings to mind modernist architecture and makes its driver feel

exceptionally intelligent – piano keys to select infotainment functions,

carbonfibre-style trim that looks especially rich and textured as it catches

the light, a centre console that rakes up like a flight deck.

The seatbacks are perhaps a little firm, and there’s some craziness with

the extremely small steering wheel that obscures the iCockpit dash if

adjusted for tall drivers and – sorry to be a stuck record – infotainment that

can’t match the BMW. But you sense a design team pulling together here,

confident in the esoteric look they’ve dreamt up, and executing it with a

flourish, not a whimper. I like it.

Lexus and Peugeot make

you look twice, and 508

drives well enough to make

you think twice about

choosing that 3-series