Car Review: Peugeot Traveller

Can an eight-seater make sense?

(Peugeot)

The Peugeot Traveller, with its room for eight people, put me in mind of an old and probably apocryphal story about Groucho Marx. Late in his career, though still coruscating, he hosted a TV game show called You Be Your Life. He used to josh with the contestants, and once exchange is supposed to have run thus;

Groucho Marx: “And how many children do you have?”

Woman Contestant: “I have 10 children”.

Groucho: “You have 10 children? Why do you have so many kids?”

Woman Contestant: “Because I love my husband”.

Groucho: “I love my cigar too, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while.”

That woman contestant, if real, might have found the Peugeot a little too cramped for her needs. There are in fact a lot of modern British families that it would suit, however.

It’s bigger than I imagined, the potential market for vehicles such as the Peugeot Traveller, which is, to put things at their simplest, a version of the Peugeot Expert van that seats eight folk (ie seven plus driver). Who needs that? Well, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, there are some 521,000 households in the UK with more than six persons in them, or about 1 in 50 such clans co-habiting in various degrees of harmony, The Windsors-style. Given that they, and others, will have to give lifts to friends and other members of the e extended family from time to time, admittedly not all en masse, I’m a bit surprised there aren’t more of these posh charabancs on the roads.

As it is, your choices are fairly limited to a trio of models made by Peugeot-Citroen in collaboration with Toyota (Peugeot Traveller, as here, Citroen SpaceTourer, Toyota ProAce), the Mercedes Vito Tourer, a pair of near-identical jobs from Vauxhall and Renault (Vivaro Combi and Trafic Passenger), the VW Transporter Shuttle and the Ford Tourneo Custom: All based on a van design, though engineered no doubt with other applications in mind.

So you’ve got to like vans, really, if you fancy one of these. I admit the van does possess a lightly macho appeal, and you can have a white one, so you can pose around as White Van man. You could stuff some crisp wrappers, a copy of the Sun and a packet of Mayfair fags across the dashboard to add to the effect, and drive around with Motorhead’s Ace of Spades blaring out, like Johnny Vegas does in the unforgettable opening scene of Sex Lives of the Potato men, one of the finest British films ever made (and about £3 on Amazon I notice).

The spec

Price: £35,685 
Engine capacity: 2 litre 4-cyl diesel
Power output (kw @ rpm): 130@3,750
​Top speed (mph): 106
0-62 mph (seconds): 11
Fuel economy (mpg): 47.9
CO2 emissions (g/km): 155
BIK: 27%

They’ve thoughtfully lowered the height of this Peugeot vehicle a little so it can get into car parks (down to 1.9 metres) and the three choices of wheel base and fold down seating options can easily convert your MPV into a proper two seater van, so you can get a lot of spuds in there too. All good.

Yet the appeal, though, wears off fairly quickly, and the surprising thing about the Peugeot Traveller that it is better to drive than it is at hauling people around. Being a delivery van, it is excellent on the motorway and the diesel unit (leaving aside the usual environmental qualms about these, they’re pretty much all you can have in this segment of the market) is torquey and refined, and makes short work indeed of motorways. With a few passengers on board it gets a bit sluggish, as you’d expect, but can still pull along with the rest of the traffic and cruises happily at speed (though you’re conscious of the precious cargo you have aboard, which I guess must be a plus for road safety).

(Peugeot (Peugeot)

They’ve added a big sunroof, leather seats and an excellent sat nav, too, plus automatic gearbox option (6 speed). The driving position is good – high up and “in control”, like a poor man’s Range Rover, and the turning circle makes it easy to manoeuvre and park, belying the vehicle’s basic bulk. There are short, medium and long wheel versions available, though I reckon the latter is a virtually unusual option in an urban environment, even with the handy rear parking camera fitted).

Despite the flexibility of the seating arrangements, in the usual short wheelbase design there isn’t really that much space in the boot, given the number of folk on board. The seats, as is the norm in this class, are in the configuration of two up-front plus tow benches of three each behind, with access via a couple of sliding doors (electrically powered too).

(Peugeot (Peugeot)

The real problem with this high and mighty vehicle is that it isn’t really that easy to get in and out of, a major drawback for a people carrier or not-so-mini cab. The step into the rear cabin were covered in a plastic that seemed quite slippery to me, and I found it a bit of a haul to get myself into the driver’s seat, and I’m not that comically short or decrepit. I ought to mention too that my example also made a very strange crackling noise every so often, as if a load of icy snow was dropping off its floor, through it wasn’t cold enough for that. I can’t believe a car with less than 1,000 miles on the clock could be haunted, so I will have to await a more satisfactory mechanical explanation of that phenomenon. It didn’t affect anything important though.

So I find it difficult to recommend the Peugeot Traveller on its own terms, and would instead suggest a more stringent regime of birth control.