2002 Peugeot 307 HDi DTurbo review from UK and Ireland

All electrics intermittently cut out - very scary in the dark at speed, but just as you start to panic they all come back on again. This has happened 3 times now - last time was in the dark and at speed - so it has got to go in to be looked at. Afterward the doors won't lock correctly until you have pressed the lock and unlock key fob a number of times, and the auto window close on lock stops working for a period of time seemingly decided by the car!

The CD player plays some CD's like old scratched records when it gets warm in the cab - A cd that sound just like a really badly scratched record - how bizarre is that!

When it arrived from the dealer the rear door was visibly out of alignment.

It took three visits to the dealer for them to look at my problems with the gear change - they ordered new parts; wrong parts, they ordered some more - correctly fitted them - no difference!! Then the service manager discovers that all 2.0 diesel models exhibit the same behavior - he said he would raise a technical note for Peugeot - I have not heard anything since. To me this is a gear box design fault and is more full explained below.

The switchgear has a tendency to stick - last time it was the decelerate button on the cruise control, now it is the accelerate control.

Occasionally the ESP driver aid fails to initialize on startup.

Generally most of the problems are due to poor design implementation and the typical French attitude that it is okay for LHD and all others (i.e. UK) can take it or leave it. The gear change is one such example. If I was European it would work fine, but I am not so the gearchange is on the other side, and due to the position of my hand it can cause difficulties when changing down from 5th gear. This is because there seems to be no gate limit on 5th - when one wants to change out of 5th gear one might apply some small lateral pressure to the right - this is to be avoided because doing so will not disengage 5th gear. Instead the gearstick will move quite freely out of the gate and into any other position, but the car will remain resolutely in 5th gear. Release the gearstick it and it will return to the 5th gear position and you can have another go to get it out of gear. Pulling back hard while the gearstick is seemingly unattached to anything will find reverse! Lovely grating sound. This is a dangerous driving distraction.

The Window screen wipers are a very elaborate affair - and offer wonderful views for the passenger, while the driver struggles with a large blind spot in front of the A post. Pity the couldn't have swapped the gearing mechanisms over for the UK roads - another distraction!

Heater control software is a joke - pressing the auto-demist button to turn it off may work - but only if you haven't pressed another button in the meantime - in which case it just cancels the action of that button. Fortunately off and auto work correctly to reset it, but it is still confusing - and your eyes are not on the road while you figure it out - could this be yet another driving distraction! And why does the A/C decide to activate on ignition sometimes and not others even though you had it turned off!

The light stalk design is horrible, when using dipped headlamps and auxiliary fog lamps, if you switch to beam and then back again the auxillary lights are canceled. So you have to switch them on again which is tiresome. Even worse if you use automatic lighting cause on occasion I have rotated the wrong switch and have been plunged into darkness as I switched the main light control from automatic (off) to sidelights only.

And why does the window screen wiper control fail to remember you are in auto-sense mode when you turn on the ignition? You have to switch the wiper stalk back to off and back again!

Drivability is okay, but the turbo diesel is sluggish at low revs and lumpy too, it even manages to rock the car gently at idle. It is not as economic fuel wise as the figures would suggest and not as sporty as advertised.

The rear fold down seats would be better if they actually folded down fully, and pity the single seat split is on the passenger side (again ideal for LHD cars)

In my opinion this car is not worthy of its "European Car of the Year" title and as far as for use on British roads should carry a health warning - I believe some of the faults on this car should be brought to the attention of RoSPA at the very least.