It is unusual for a launch drive to focus purely on racetrack, but then the 208 GTi 30th Anniversary is anything but usual. Limited to just 26 examples locally, the car fettled by the Peugeot Sport skunk works is not only a big improvement on the standard 208 GTi but also a taste of what’s to come next year with the Peugeot Sport-enhanced 308 GTi.
This may be the shortest launch road test ever. It wasn’t even on a road. Peugeot gave us a 208 GTi and a 208 GTi 30th Anniversary to cut three laps in each back-to-back on the Amaroo Circuit on the southern section of Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek this week.
So I can’t tell you single thing about how well the cruise control worked, what the 30th Anniversary is like riding over potholes, how well it vertakes or even what its fuel consumption average is. I didn’t even listen to the audio, never mind sync my phone.
We've already covered plenty on the Peugeot 208 GTi 30th Anniversary edition and it's initial popularity with buyers, but for more about what it’s like to drive flat-out on a track, read on.
This was an unusual experience in other ways too; evaluating a car that has almost sold out here, where less than 30 examples from a global total of just 500 will be available.
I know what you’re thinking, but stay with me here. This is a bigger story than what an almost sold-out car is like versus its standard, run-of-the mill relation on a track.
It is a portent of what is to come from future models fettled by Peugeot Sport, such as the French brand's all-important performance halo model, the new 308 GTi, which is due here in the first quarter next year.
We spent three laps — each 13 turns and 1.8km in length — in the 208 GTi and then another three in the 208 GTi 30th Anniversary.
What was common to both GTis was their engines’ inclination to rev freely. However, they were also singing from the same discordant song sheet when it came to the long-throw gear changes in their six-speed manual-only transmissions, and their tendency for 'electronic flywheel effect' rev-hanging. Echoes of the 206 GTi here, from 15 years ago. Peugeot, take note.
We first headed out in the standard 208 GTi. What was clear about this car was that it really felt very much like a road car being thrashed on a race circuit — that is, it tended to understeer and run wide on corners when pushed, felt a bit floaty at speed and when pulling out of tighter corners the traction control worked overtime to quell wheelspin.
So straight into the GTi 30th. What more to learn beyond the striking two-tone paintwork with matt-black paint on the front three-quarters of the car hand-brushed in six coats in the factory?
For starters, the 30th gains 6kW of power and 25Nm of torque over the standard 208 GTi, but in three laps each I couldn’t distinguish much improvement. It was more about the chassis and brakes, and what magic Peugeot Sport has weaved there.
The 30th had so much lateral grip and such an ability to depart quickly and cleanly from tight, slow corners at full throttle that it was difficult to believe it's from the same gene pool as the regular GTi.
The 30th gripped better with its stickier rubber, cornered flatter, pulled out of corners more swiftly with its Torsen diff and turned in more crisply with its faster-ratio steering. In our short period on the track with it, the bigger brakes also appeared to hose off speed more assertively than the standard GTi too.
Alas, at $36,000, this special-edition is about $6500 pricier than the standard 208 GTi, which along with the rest of the 208 range is in line for a facelift by the end of this year. But it's also Peugeot's most formidable answer yet for pint-size hot-hatch rivals like the Volkswagen Polo GTI, Ford Fiesta ST and Renault Clio RS.
If the 208 GTi 30th Anniversary is anything to go by, Ford, Renault and Volkswagen should be furiously taking notes in anticipation of Peugeot rolling out the big guns next year with the 308 GTi 250 and 308 GTi 270.