Peugeot 407 Coupe | Luxury, but at what cost?

When I was young and could only dream of driving, my dad would love gloating about his car history. One in particular always stuck in my mind, his Ford Zephyr. Luxurious leather, chrome for days and shagpile carpets, all wrapped around a V6 up front. Did I mention this was his second car? I could only dream of such things… Couldn’t I?

When it came to sell my beloved Skoda and move onto something new, I made it a personal mission to own a luxurious V6 for my second car. I wanted to see if it was still possible for someone young to own, also I felt like sticking it to my father!

Enter the Peugeot 407 Coupe, 15 feet of French luxuriousness, gadgets galore and of course that hefty V6 I always wanted. Now, I know what you’re thinking... An odd choice for a 20-year-old, but today I’m going to go through the ins and outs of this French luxo-barge and tell you just why it was the right choice to make, mostly...

My bias towards Peugeot before owning one was fairly similar to its common stereotype. Thinking that they're pretty unreliable and owned mostly by people that use cars as an A-B tool and not much more. I adore the classic hot hatches, but the generic cars (especially from around the mid 2000’s) left a lot to be desired.

At the time of release, the 407 in its coupe form was the flagship of the fleet and differed wildly from the saloon or SW. Though you can tell it came from the same family, it was always the better looking sibling of the fleet.

The car has a very classic GT car aesthetic. The long front has a much sportier look with more prominent headlights and a huge gaping mouth for a grille. A low and curved roofline meets a short and sharp saloon style boot. The extra long pillarless doors highlight the sleek look, though they can be a bit of a pain in tight parking spaces.

The cabin feels large and light thanks to the oversized windows and ivory leather. It’s luxurousness does sort of fall short with the very plastic center console and “French” fit and finish. The center screen with its built in phone and sat-nav were good at their time but felt dated even in 2015 due to it’s lack of USB, aux and bluetooth. It also didn’t help that the design department machine gunned the buttons onto the centre console, making it ridiculously complicated to navigate.

The luxury was teamed with the best tech that 2006 had to offer, with “automatic” being the keyphrase in the options list. Auto levelling, adaptive steering headlights would turn on automatically when the sun began to set. Team this with the auto wipers and headlight washers and seeing where your going became a very simple ordeal. Heated electric memory seats, adaptive suspension and adaptive steering top off the list.

I’ve spoken about how good the 407 Coupe is at lapping up the miles, but what about when you show it something a little more difficult? The short answer is, okayish… The car has two sport options to help it along, one for the engine, the other for suspension. The engines sport mode offered a slightly better throttle response and quicker shifts but held the revs on each shift just a little too long, you are much better shifting the auto gearbox over to the manual selector and controlling the gears yourself.

The suspension is quite a different story. The car almost transforms from a soft and supple cruiser to being fun and responsive. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a heavy car, but the sport suspension manages to hide that weight pretty effectively.

At the start of this post, I spoke about my trepidation with reliability. So how did my little slice of French motoring do for the stereotype? Well, not much to be honest… To its credit, the Coupe was mechanically sound throughout my ownership, I can’t deny that Peugeot do make some fantastic diesel engines (you only need to look at their Le Mans cars). But living up to the peugeot stereotype, it wasn’t without its electrical issues. The parking sensors were sporadic at best, one of the tyre pressure sensors died, the electric-only boot release failed (minutes before we were due to go on holiday), the climate control on the drivers side broke and would only blow cold, the heated seat on the drivers side failed and it had a tenancy to throw warning lights for no good reason.

But these all pale in comparison to the one big issue I experienced on the drive home from buying this thing. I noticed when changing through the gears, it wasn’t shifting smoothly. At low speeds it started to bang and judder. This progressively got worse on the way home and over the next couple of days until eventually it became undriveable. This turned out to be a faulty hydraulic solenoid and was not simple or cheap to fix. Getting it sorted involved arguments with two garages and weeks without my then-new car. It’s a story and a half for sure, but one that I will go into in another post. For now, all you need to know is that it was an almost catastrophic fault, but one that could’ve been avoided.

So how did I find my time owning this car? Well it was an experience to say the least.The 407 Coupe is a polar opposite to my Skoda Fabia, in some good and some bad ways. I loved the luxury, the gadgets and the comfort. I loved the way it would cruise down the road and look good while doing it, it definitely made me feel good driving it.

But as much as I liked owning and driving the Coupe, it just seemed to fall short in places. The string of electrical issues spoilt the luxury and quality feel of the car. It also lacked that “fizz” that some cars give you when they’re really being driven.

In my opinion, if you’re looking for an affordable luxurious mile muncher, look no further. But if you’re looking for a driving machine to fall in love with, maybe this isn’t the car for you.