This Mad 500bhp 4WD Peugeot 308 R Hybrid Is A Concept That Needs To Become Reality

When we drove the current hottest Peugeot 308 - the GT - earlier in the year, we weren’t exactly blown away. But, this new 308 R Hybrid - sadly just a concept for now - is a whole lot more potent. How potent, you ask? It’s packing 493bhp and 538lb ft of torque. Yikes.

That mighty output comes from the same 1.6-litre turbo four-pot found in the RCZ R - which in the R Hybrid powers the front wheels - plus an electric motor on each axle. Yep, this is a four-wheel drive 308. That part-electric grunt makes the 308 R Hybrid rather brisk: it’ll do 0-62mph in four seconds dead, and will go onto an electronically-limted top speed of 155mph. Despite all that, it has an emissions figure of just 70g/km.

Want a bit less poke? You can dial back from the full ‘Hot Lap’ mode to ‘Track’ mode, giving 394bhp, or drop it back further to ‘Road’ mode for a mere 296bhp.

Peugeot currently isn’t saying if it’ll put a mad hybrid hot hatch like this into production, but the company is widely understood to be bringing out a hot ‘R’ version of the 308 eventually. It’d be interesting to see if Peugeot decides to give that car some hybrid tech, or if the eventual 308 R is complemented by a production version of this concept.

Fancy seeing the concept in the metal? It’ll be on display at the Shanghai motor show, which starts on 22 April.