PSA: An Early Peugeot 208 GTI Is Now Dirt Cheap

We probably didn’t realise at the time, but in the 2010s, we were living through a golden age of the hot hatch on a scale not seen since the 1980s. Ford revived the Fiesta ST with hugely entertaining results. Renaultsport was still knocking out brutally quick Meganes, and its naturally-aspirated Clio 200s were still around in the early part of the decade. Hyundai became unexpected standard-bearers with the N cars. The VW Golf GTI remained predictably brilliant in its Mk6 and 7 iterations.

Then there was Peugeot, which had its own proper crack at hot hatch greatness of the likes it hadn’t managed since the ‘90s. We were all a little apprehensive when it launched the 208 GTi in 2012 – yes, this was a direct ancestor of the magnificent 205 GTi, but Peugeot’s previous go at a hot hatch, the first-generation 308 GTi, had been an underpowered, overweight pudding of a car.

We needn’t have worried. The 208 GTi was a brilliant return to hot hatch form for Peugeot: 197bhp from a 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder and a kerb weight of just 1160kg were good starting points, but Peugeot finessed the recipe with a fantastic chassis and gearchange. The steering feel wasn’t the greatest, but this was a small blip in an otherwise brilliant car. If the first 308 GTi was a pudding, the 208 was a macaroon: small, light, perfectly formed and brilliantly flavoursome.

This excellence was repeated with the fleetingly rare RCZ R coupe and the vastly improved second-generation 308 GTi. The faster, harder ‘by Peugeot Sport’ version of the 208 GTi further improved on the original, and for a while, Peugeot was back as one of the market leaders in accessible performance.

And then, suddenly, they all went away. The slow-selling RCZ was dropped, and the 208 and 308 were replaced, with no hot versions of the new cars emerging. Almost as soon as it had begun, Peugeot’s performance revival was over.

In fact, pretty much all of those brilliant hot hatches we mentioned in the opening have disappeared in the face of tighter emissions regulations, narrower profit margins and a consumer thirst for SUVs that refuses to be slaked. The Hyundai i20 and i30 N: dead, in Europe at least. The Fiesta ST: dead. The entire Renaultsport brand: dead. The Golf GTI: living, but at almost £40k and without a manual gearbox.

We didn’t know how good we had it. If you need a reminder of how brilliant the hot hatch market was a few short years ago, then the 208 GTi represents some of the best value for money of all: if you want to take a bit of a gamble, high-mileage, many-owner cars have dropped below £4,000.

Decent ones, though, still look like bargains: here’s a 2015 car for bang on £5,000. It’s had three owners, but only covered 67,000 miles, and a quick look at the MOT history doesn’t show anything too scary.

Of course, there are other options for this sort of money: Fiesta STs, Clio 200s, Cooper Ss and more can all be had for a similar price, but they’ll generally be leggier, higher-mileage cars. We probably won’t see another car like this from any of those makes, but especially not Peugeot, which makes us very sad indeed. At least we’ll always have the used market, but we have a sneaking suspicion these cars won’t stay cheap for too much longer.