2004 Peugeot 407 2.2 i 16V SPORT AUTOMATIC Review,Start Up, Engine, and In Depth Tour

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• published: 14 Mar 2011
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For more in depth reviews check my channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/avtomobili001?feature=mhum Filmed by: Tomaž Kožar Jesenice According to people I meet in petrol stations and at dinner parties nobody reads this column any more because it's just a blizzard of scarlet Ferraris and jet-black Lamborghinis, a meaningless background babble of silly price tags and preposterous superlatives. Of course it's not hard to see why this might be so. In this job you can choose which car is brought to your house on a Monday morning, fully insured, brimful with free petrol and spotlessly clean. So would you elect to spend the week in a Kia Magentis or a Ferrari 575? If you go for the Kia, you will have a miserable time at the wheel, followed by an even more miserable time at the computer. The cursor will wink away until you're driven into the kitchen to see if the plate of cold sausages that weren't there half an hour ago have miraculously appeared. Then you'll have a cup of coffee and read the papers. Then you'll look at the cursor a bit more and play Free Cell until it's time to check the fridge again. If, on the other hand, you select the Ferrari, the words just vomit out of your head as your fingers dance on the keyboard desperately trying to keep up. It takes me all day to write 1,500 words about something dull from the Far East. But I can rattle off a piece on any Italian silly car in 20 minutes flat. That, then, is why I prefer to write about exotica. But amazingly, and contrary to popular myth, I hardly ever do. It turns out the big and sinister motor industry pays a marketing company to keep tabs on what journalists say about their cars, and — how can I put this? — I have managed to obtain the dossier on me. It's scary, partly because I now realise everything I write is being monitored and partly because of the results. You see, the brand I write and talk about most of all is not Ferrari or Lamborghini — they're at the bottom of the list. It is, in fact, Renault. Can you believe that? What's more, the report isn't just quantitative; it's qualitative, too, so the car firms can see not just how often I mention them but whether I'm kind or foul. BMW, it seems, comes in for the most stick, which isn't surprising given the primary-school styling and the melted Action Man plastic on the dashboards. What is surprising is that I'm most kind about Porsches. I have no idea how this has happened but I do know how to bring the average down a bit . . . The Cayenne is ugly and driven by people who are too daft to realise the Range Rover's a better car. The new 911 is a con because it's exactly the same as the old one, which, in turn, was exactly the same as the one that came along in 1453. And the Boxster is only driven by homosexuals. There; now let's move on to poor old Peugeot, the only car maker on the list about whom I've never uttered or written a single, solitary kind word. It's all been neutral, negative or very negative. I can't think why because what Renault, Peugeot and, to a lesser extent, Citroën offer today's motorist is a mouthwatering alternative to the German norm. These days it has been decided that we, the customers, all want dark, gloomy German interiors, hard German seats and a sporty German ride. So all cars, whether they be British, Italian, Japanese or American, are built to ape that Teutonic sense of unburstability you get from a Volkswagen or a Mercedes-Benz. Happily, though, Johnny Frog continues to sing from his own song sheet. Renault especially — aargh, I'm mentioning it again — gives us light, breezy interiors, squidgy seats and a floaty ride. What's more, French cars these days are priced well below the German rivals and come as standard with all sorts of electronic trickery such as rain-sensing wipers and tyre-pressure sensors to make them even more appealing. And best of all, French cars — just about all of them — are cool.You certainly find this with Peugeot's relatively new 407. With its huge lights and that massive mouth, it has the front-end drama of a supercar welded to the rear end of an ordinary saloon. Not since the Rover SD1 has this been achieved so successfully. It is very cool, very striking and, we're told, very safe in an accident. It is also well equipped. For £18,450 you get electric seats, door mirrors that fold away when the car's locked, parking sensors, hazard warning lights that come on automatically if you brake hard, headlamps that come on when it's dark and wipers that come on when it's raining. Also, there are airbags, for your head, your ears, your passenger and even, I'm thrilled to say, for your testicles.