#02#GT used to stand for Grand Touring or Gran Turismo before Ford stole the moniker for its go-faster Cortina and everyone else followed suit; a GT car was one suited for cross-continent journeys in minimum time, maximum comfort and minimum stress. Is the new Peugeot 407 GT worthy of the badge?
First signs are good; the model name may be GT, but there is no trace of a GT badge on the car or any of the go-faster addenda prevalent with the misuse of the badge. No big arches, no big spoilers (or even little ones), not even any red piping! In fact the 407 GT ticks the first set of boxes rather well in that it is completely subtle in its approach; it would take the wettest of anoraks to spot that this is the GT rather than a lesser model in the range.
The next set of boxes to tick is the one relating to style. Our 407 GT scored well there too, looking stylish and classy in its pale blue metallic paint. Open the doors and the black leather seats along with black and aluminium interior are very classy, setting a pleasant ambience for long journeys.
A GT car needs to be quick too. The 407 GT is available in both petrol and diesel engine versions; our 407 GT came with the turbocharged 2.7-litre 24-valve V6 HDi diesel unit also
used by Jaguar, so you know straight away it's going to be good. This engine develops 205bhp at 4000rpm and 330lb.ft at 1900rpm. Coupled with a six-speed automatic gearbox (with sequential manual change facility) this is sufficient to post a 0-62mph time of 8.5 seconds and go on to a top speed of 143mph. And being an automatic, the acceleration time is something anyone can achieve rather than just the domain of brutal road testers. So, it's quick enough too.
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What about relaxing? As I said earlier, a GT car needs to be able to cover long journeys with minimum stress and maximum comfort. Another bull's eye here. The V6 HDi engine is quite simply the quietest diesel engine I've driven. With the windows closed it is all but impossible to tell it is a diesel-fuelled unit, and only just noticeable with the windows open. A number of passengers were ferried around in the 407 GT and none twigged it was diesel. The six-speed automatic gearbox is completely seamless; you simply don't feel the changes. When kicking down to overtake traffic, it became evident that the gearbox was changing down by just a little increase in engine noise and urgency, but even then the characteristic V6 sound was more evident than any diesel clatter.
All the quietness and smoothness in the world would be wasted if the suspension let the car down. The 407 GT comes with normal or sport mode for the damping. Left alone, it displays exemplary manners, cushioning the occupants from all but the worst road imperfections yet maintaining good body control and very little roll. Push on and the 407 GT tucks into corners with the eagerness of something much smaller and sportier. I was stunned when I found that it weighed 1800kg, although this would explain why the brakes felt rather marginal when in a hurry.
A run down to the south coast, about 100 miles each way, showed that this truly is a GT car of the old school, only so much better than anything the '60s could have offered. Cruising as fast as traffic conditions would reasonably allow (and not wanting to completely throw away my licence), the 407 GT got me to my destination feeling as fresh as when I got in the car. Wind noise is commendably low - it's a particular bugbear of mine - and road noise only became intrusive on the 'wrong kind of surfaces'. Better still was the realisation that fuel consumption for this quick 200 mile blast was up in the high thirties, which is much better than the quoted combined figure of 33.6mpg and not far adrift of the extra-urban figure of 43.4mpg. A little more restraint would surely have seen better than 40mpg and even with a lot of slow town driving we averaged better than 34mpg over more than 400 miles.
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So yes, the Peugeot 407 GT is a proper GT car, in the traditional sense. And in this form it's more than well-equipped too. The GT adds £2,300 to the price of the next model down in the range, the 407 Sport, but this brings with it colour satellite navigation system with built in telephone, xenon lights (disappointing), laminated side windows for extra security and noise reduction, rear side airbags and pyrotechnic rear seat belts (to add to front, curtain and side airbags), heated seats, leather and even blinds for the rear side and rear windows. And that's just the additions to a list that already includes electric seats with memory, CD autochanger, rear parking assist, 17-inch alloys, door mirrors that automatically fold shut when you lock the car, and open when you unlock... the list seems never ending.
So far it's all been good. The car drives well and it's hard to understand how Peugeot can possibly do all this for just £25,925 even allowing for Peugeot not having the prestige of the German marques. And then you start to live with the car and it's the little details that start to frustrate.
The satellite navigation doesn't allow postcode entry; there were two roads with the same name (four miles apart) when I went down south, and predictably I went to the wrong one. It got confused at roundabouts with the main screen and instruction giving the correct option but the graphic dead ahead of the driver telling you to do the opposite! And it gave very late warnings that you needed to turn off motorways which made for entertainment, but not relaxing progress.
The instrument dials are white with red markings and the red lights up, which look great in daylight, and at night the dials appear dark grey and are equally good. But at dusk they appear light grey and the red markings are too fussy to easily read - it must have taken me two to three seconds to understand how fast I was going and that's much too long.
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The built in mobile phone seems a great idea, but in practice who really removes their SIM card from their phone to place in the dash on every journey? [
Ed: According to Peugeot, using a second SIM in the car permanently works just fine.] Lesser models have a Bluetooth phone kit built in which is far more practical. Another corollary of the built-in phone is that there are SIXTY buttons on the centre console alone - 15 of them relate to the phone. It takes forever to locate the correct control and many times I used the wrong ones. Throw in four stalks hanging off the steering column and the steering wheel controls and it's button/knob/stalk overload. And finally, other ergonomic problems were the gearchange quadrant markings that are not lit up at night so you have to guess where you were pulling the gear selector, and the heated seat controls seemed an afterthought, impossible to see from your natural seating position, again not lit up and devoid of any warning they are on.
Don't let these foibles give the wrong impression; sometimes you have to think hard about a car to pick faults and the 407 GT excelled so well in all the important areas that I was reduced to being finicky. It looks more expensive than it is and it drives better than its price suggests; buy one now before Peugeot decides to put the price up!
2007 Peugeot 407 saloon UK range overview
- Peugeot 407 1.8 S: £15,700
- Peugeot 407 2.0 SE: £17,375
- Peugeot 407 2.0 SE Automatic: £18,475
- Peugeot 407 2.2 Sport: £19,325
- Peugeot 407 GT 3.0 V6 Automatic: £24,445
- Peugeot 407 S HDi 110: £16,545
- Peugeot 407 S HDi 136: £17,450
- Peugeot 407 SE HDi 110: £17,545
- Peugeot 407 SE HDi 136: £18,450
- Peugeot 407 SE HDi 136 Automatic: £19,575
- Peugeot 407 Sport HDi 136: £19,800
- Peugeot 407 Sport HDi 136 Automatic: £20,925
- Peugeot 407 Sport HDi 170: £21,300
- Peugeot 407 Sport V6 HDi Automatic: £23,625
- Peugeot 407 GT HDi 136: £22,100
- Peugeot 407 GT HDi 136 Automatic: £23,225
- Peugeot 407 GT HDi 170: £23,600
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Peugeot 407 GT V6 HDi Automatic: £25,925
Note: The RT4 Multi-Media system is standard on the GT models and : £995 extra on all other models from SE-specification upwards.
