Peugeot 407

The 407 boasts a fine ride and very refined diesel engines, but its practicality is compromised by that stand-out style.

Auto Express Car Reviews

Rating:
On the road price: £20,150 - £28,750
For : Generous kit, refined diesels, comfortable ride, responsive handling
Against : Small SW boot, poor passenger room, cluttered dashboard, terrible residuals

Driving
The 407 range offers an impressive range of smooth diesels alongside less impressive petrol units - and customers respond accordingly, with diesels taking 80 per cent of all 407 sales. 1.6-litre, 2.0-litre and 2.2-litre HDi units make it easy to forget they need to be filled at the black pump. There's also a 2.7-litre V6 diesel; the unit is shared with Jaguar, and has long been renowned for its refinement and hefty punch. The chassis is well suited to the smooth motors too, as the 407 is a relaxed companion. The ride and handling compromise is pretty much perfect - comfortable on rough city roads, while retaining decent body control at higher speeds. Push hard and the 407 comes alive; the sharp turn-in helps to make it an involving car to drive, although the ESP does have a tendency to activate too early. The gearlever action itself is less impressive though; long ratios are shifted between imprecisely, making quick changing a tricky business and hindering off-the-line acceleration. Automatic units are unexceptional, too.

Marketplace
Say what you like about the proportions of the 407, but you can't deny it stands out from run-of-the-mill family saloons. However, the rakeish headlights, stubby tail and cab-forward stance can't divert attention away from the nose; the lengthy overhang is the 407's most questionable aspect. It comes in three guises - a coupe-like four-door saloon, an actual two-door coupe, and the dramatic SW estate. All share the same gaping grille and swept-back headlights, while short rear overhangs work particularly well in SW guise. Fleet-focused trim lines are all well equipped, with GT models proving lavish in the extreme. However, more affordable S and SE trims should have all you need, including eight airbags (with two more side bags optional in the rear). Natural rivals are the Ford Mondeo, Renault Laguna, Vauxhall Vectra and Volkswagen Passat, all of which offer an estate version - though only VW, like Peugeot, chooses not to offer a hatchback version.

Owning
Good styling doesn't always equal good practicality. The saloon's boot is average and, as a load-lugger, the SW is compromised. The angled tailgate eats in to the load area, and there's limited vertical space - even folding the parcel shelf out of the way is awkward. Worse still, a deep sill hinders the boot aperture, and even folding the rear seats only yields a paltry maximum load area of 1,341 litres. Rear legroom is at a premium as well. But build quality can't be faulted and while the button-laden centre console looks cluttered, the 407 is a comfortable car to sit in, that by and large is extremely well-equipped, too. It's generally a very economical car, once again, particularly in HDi diesel guise. 20,000-mile service intervals are impressive but you should watch depreciation rates. They hover around the low-30s mark, meaning after three years, the 407 loses two thirds of its value.

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2 Comments

ENGINEERING vs Non-engineering.

1. Why should a good engineered car with up-to-date design, generous creature comforts and safety features equipped, loose two-thirds of its value just after three years?
2. Which authority decides on this, and on what basis?
3. What is Peugeot's defence on her brand value, and French engineering?
4. As an admirer of French cars, what is Peugeot doing to protect her customers against low residue sales set by non-engineering parties?
5. As a MNC icon, why can't Peugeot set up a buy-back division to control value of trade-ins while gaining full customer confidence, but rather leave it to used-car dealers to dictate residual values?

Peugeot and other French marques always make good presentation on their introductory models, like the French wines, perfumes, fashion, & bags.
But on their cars, as in the past, its always a sad ending for the owners - losing so much!

To the Peugeot CEO,

Listen to your customers!
Make them happy, proud, & confident in your brand.
CHANGE! Change your operating systems, structures, ideology..
No yes-men! - only market feedback & real customer plights..
Go back to the planning room, and everyone on board must brainstorm - for new ideas, new game plan!..
Do something DISTINCTIVE - for your customers, for your brand.
JUST DO IT!, Peugeot.

By pam863 on 12 November, 2009, 10:17am

Did they loose something along the way

Peugeot, like so many other car manufacturers have fallen into the value engineering trap with the 407 model and I guess that says it all really.

They have built what on the face of it should have been a worthy successor to the 406 range but in doing so forgot what made the 406 such a great purchase and one model that you still see plenty of even today, not so the 407 with many main dealer not even bothering to hold stocks of second hand vehicles on there forecourts, in fact there are few of them around even privately compared to the 406 so what happened.

Well to begin with the styling of the vehicle compromised it's practicality in so many ways, some easy to spot like the boot access and the rear visibility, rear seat leg room is frankly abysmal, small people only in there please, that front over hang is I'm guessing a slip of the pencil, makes parking onto a curb fraught with problems of grounding and I am certain other former owners could list reams of problems with the cars base design.

It is as if the company made a conscious decision to take this vehicle range out of the family sector and once they had the design could not really place it anywhere in the market, even so they produced it and frankly it was a failure, not heard a good word from anyone but pundits about the car.

As for general reliability again unlike the 406 which seemed indestructible and would stand any amount of abuse the 407 proved to be tender and prone to problems across the board, so much so that most quickly have been withdrawn though I will say this for them, those that are still running seem to be the exception and are proving to be very good general runabouts.

So were did they go wrong, well from a customer point of view, namely me, they lost sight of who it was they were producing the car for and it was not the fleet market, taking the 405/6 ranges as an example they mostly ended up in the hands of families who even today run them to eventual destruction which takes a very long time, I have one that is over 170,000 on the clock and is still used daily, offers for another I have in storage even though it is over 108,000 miles have tempted me to sell, but not for many minutes, the range proved reliable and practical in all respects and though the later models were prone to electrical problems due mostly to poor design of the wiring looms and connectors, the rot had begun to set in by then at Peugeot, they still prove very hard to eradicate, and this is the sort of thing families look at when they purchase a car.

Is it practical in most aspects, does it drive well and be reasonably economical, is the interior tough enough to stand up to family use while being comfortable and able to be handled by the average house wife, the 406 did all of these things and more, the 407 does non of most of them and is poor at most of the others.

Car manufacturers are constantly banging on about the future of motoring but I would advise them to stop and look back a few years and heed the original design concept of the 2CV, it had to be able of carrying two farmers in clogs a sheep and a bale of straw, very much like the average family abuse content really, if the 407 had done even two thirds of this it would have been a good car, sadly it was not to be.

By Blackjack on 13 February, 2012, 10:49pm

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Pictures

Peugeot 407