Long-term report: A bright future with our Peugeot 3008

I’ve mentioned it before, but if I was specifying a brand-new car, the first option box I’d tick would be the one for LED headlights. Compared with old-fashioned halogens they’re just so much brighter, clearer and safer – not to mention so ubiquitous on new models, that a modern vehicle without them looks downright odd.

That’s certainly the case with the Peugeot 3008, and one of the reasons I’m so glad our GT-Line model has them fitted as part of its standard equipment. I live near a Peugeot dealer, and most mornings I’ll catch sight of a more basic 3008 with the standard halogen headlights. The old-fashioned yellowish beams look a total anachronism compared with the Peugeot’s sharp-edged design.

The lights on our car aren’t anything especially clever – they do without the selective dimming or cornering functions of some more sophisticated rivals, and I’ve turned off the automatic high beam assist out of principle. But they give off loads of light and make driving at night a pleasure. They’re also far from the only LEDs on the car…

LED daytime running lights are par for the course, but I do think the 3008’s eyebrow-like examples are particularly smart. They double as the indicators, too, with a really cool scrolling action of the kind you’d usually only see on premium models.

Round to the rear, the good news tails off a little – the taillights are halogen, but I still like the way they look with their three-bar design. Best of all is the interior, which features lashings of utterly pointless but desperately cool mood lighting in the doors and centre console. Even the interior dome and map lights are LED.

The overall effect is one that mates really well with the i-Cockpit display, fitted as standard to all 3008s. I’ve been genuinely impressed with it during my time with the 3008, arguably moreso than I am with the displays fitted to more expensive models.

It’s really clear, with a big digital speedometer regardless of the ‘mode’ you put the gauges in. I tend to favour ‘Dials’ which mimics a traditional speedometer and rev counter, but on late night journeys I’ve slipped it into ‘Minimal’ and turned the brightness down, helping me concentrate more on the road ahead.

The graphics to switch between the different modes are slick and swoopy – a bit too swoopy, if I’m honest – but show that Peugeot’s far from lagging behind when it comes to this sort of technology.

So are there any downsides to life with our 3008? Well, winter’s freezing cold depths have brought up a few complaints. I know, I know – I’m a millennial snowflake – but I feel a £30,000 car should have heated seats thrown in as standard, and their omission from this GT-Line spec is one that riles me every morning.

I’ve also been known to swear at the automatic wipers, which are especially dim-witted – and don’t have a warning for low washer fluid, which left me high and dry with a salt-covered windscreen on one particularly grim trip to work.

But generally, I’ve been enjoying life with ‘our’ 3008, and I reckon the sheer number of them I see on the roads (it’s the best-selling SUV in Europe) proves that others are, too.