Can a 360hp plug-in hybrid estate sock it to company car drivers instead of the usual crossover crowd? Nat Barnes reports back on our new long-termer Peugeot.

The flagship 508 SW is the Peugeot Sport Engineered version with bespoke handling and 360hp of power

Peugeot 508 PSE SW

List price (BiK): £55,795 (14%) CO2: 46g/km MPG/ EV range: 138.9mpg / 26mls Test efficiency: TBC

Report 1:

It’s a measure of just how far the company car market has come that us running a Peugeot 508 SW on our long-term fleet might now be seen as a little unusual.

Without wanting to get too wistful, not so long ago, office car parks would have been full of family saloons like this. And yet now, the Nissan Primera and Renault Laguna are long gone, Vauxhall’s Insignia has just departed and the Ford Mondeo range is a shadow of its former self. All have been slain by the ever-continuing popularity of the crossover.

Except not the Peugeot 508 which has stood firm. I’m a big fan of traditional estate cars, so over the next six months, I’m trying out the 508 SW in plug-in hybrid guise to see if it can stand up to that crossover onslaught in the family car market.

I’m also doing things a little different. The first three months will be spent trying out this flagship Peugeot Sport Engineered version, tuned for performance and handling along with packing a 360hp punch, then we’ll be swapping into a more traditional plug-in hybrid SW model.

No, I haven’t had one too many sips of Top Deck (to keep up the retro theme…) and I’m not about to pretend that the PSE is exactly prime fleet market material, but as a halo model to tempt drivers, it has to be applauded – nobody ever complained about the Mondeo ST or Sierra Cosworth after all.

The good news for business drivers is that the PSE still boasts a 46g/km emissions figure, putting it into the 14% Benefit-in-Kind bracket with a 26-mile all-electric range. With that electric power focused on performance rather than parsimony, I’m planning on keeping the battery topped up with electricity as frequently as possible to maximise its economy.

And, while I know looks aren’t everything (or so Mrs B keeps telling me), I think the 508 SW PSE is a stunning looking car. The standard SW is pretty easy on the eye anyway, but the PSE takes that a step further. We’ve already had pedestrians and other drivers asking us about it – and that’s not something you normally get in a family estate.

Yes, this PSE is an unusual case, but we’ll be asking whether it can really fulfil the promise of being both a sports car and a plug-in hybrid estate at the same time. Watch this space.