29 Jun 07
It's not pretty, is it?
Peugeot disagrees - chief executive Frederic Saint-Geours says the new 308 is nothing short of 'beautiful'.
But if you sidestep the marketing spin and ask why the replacement for the 307 is the way it is, the explanation goes to the very heart of the modern car industry - an industry that, at its best, has mastered the art of compromise.
In an ideal world, cars would all be as pretty as a Brera, as agile as a Cayman, as useful as a Transit and as frugal as a Fabia. That's not going to happen. When you're building a car for the mass market the big issues are not high performance, sexy styling and cutting-edge innovation but space, fuel economy and safety.
307: predecessor
And there's a huge extra factor that comes into play when you're building the successor to a successful car: recognition. Nissan a decade ago and, more recently, Kia have been able to put some strikingly bold designs into production because they were replacing cars that no-one wanted to be associated with. By contrast the 308, which goes on sale in September, has to follow the most successful car Peugeot has ever built in this class.
The 307 has sold more than three million worldwide in the six years since its launch; in the UK it sold a Focus-rivalling 49,000 in its single most successful year. Peugeot's share of the western European market is increasing, despite the extra competition from Korea and the US. When the stakes are this big there's a lot to lose by making changes for change's sake - hence the conservatism of BMW's Mini MkII., a perfect example of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' thinking.
