When the Peugeot 407 2.0 HDI Sport Coupe was very new I tested it and concluded that it would be a fantastic used car.
So 4 years later we bought a non-approved main dealer car (by which we mean a Peugeot from a Citroen Franchise) to see if I was right. Had we bought a Peugeot from a Peugeot Franchise we would have expected more assurances and better preparation, but we would have paid more too.
Click here to read about the car we bought which ended up needing some warranty work.
What’s a bad one like to live with after 3 years?
A bad 407 Coupe is like a good one except the previous owner has done something to spoil it. New, this is a luxurious, refined, comfortable, stylish, practical car that we have nothing but praise for; it’s the people that buy and repair them that cause the trouble.
Sadly, it is also an alloy-wheel shod car and so there is potential for the wheels to be easily out of balance or damaged, the long bonnet can be scuffed from careless parking and the cloth interior can amass dirt in the many tight corners.
Our 4 year old one needed a key, a tyre valve, an alloy wheel changed, and some balancing and tracking work done (which was more time consuming and traumatic than it should have been).
Because this is a Peugeot every semi-electric part (including tyre valves and keys) is potentially expensive as every job will involve 10 minute re-coding at a Peugeot main dealer, for which they will charge you 80 minutes if you are not careful.
But those issues aside, a good valet and some air fresheners later, and it felt like a good 407...
What’s a good one like to live with after 3 years?
Throughout this bitterly cold winter I have driven the 407 up the M1 to Yorkshire, then cross-country to Norfolk and back to London. Cocooned in the big – still solid feeling – sports seats with the heater up, I sat in the inside lane and cruised quietly as if in a much more expensive car – I arrived at the end of a 3.5 hour journey refreshed, if a little bored. The car performed almost as well as it did when brand new – everything still feeling straight, tight and true. Not ‘baggy’ like an old used car will.
Going cross-country to Norfolk there are long stretches of wide, single carriageway A-road choc-full of lorries and tractors, and vans so old and slow they should be scrapped. So regular motorists in the area take the Italian approach of overtaking through the gap in the middle, forcing oncoming traffic to move over.
This is fine provided they do move over – and provided the road doesn’t narrow suddenly – but if either goes wrong you must know you have some power under the hood. The 2.0 HDI may be the small engine in this car, but it has plenty of power for this kind of driving. As a GT car driver, I would have enjoyed more power – but it wasn’t necessary. With 50,000 miles on the clock this engine is singing beautifully.
Everyone that sees the Peugeot agrees it is still a head-turner after 4 years and car fans almost always comment that the styling must be by the same people who do Ferraris.
And on top of all this, when we took it to Ikea, we folded the rear seats flat and enjoyed the practicality of a dull saloon. Add to that the Bluetooth phone connection, parking sensors, dual air conditioning, electric windows and mirrors, cd-player and automatic lights that all work as well as the day they were made and the build quality of the 407 Coupe is beyond doubt.
Especially as the previous owner of our car wasn’t exactly caring of it.
Summary
A £22,000+ luxurious GT car that is practical and comfortable and still feels like new can be yours for under £7,000.
Words: Matthew Tumbridge