You wanted a sport car, but with limited budget, and years ago, you put in a Toyota's Levin in your 30-year-old corolla, hoping to get a feel of it, yet you are still thirst for more power, as the old chassis was not made to handle that. You are now all grown up, with a better income, and enough budget to skip the Proton Satria GTI which has nothing in power relation of a real Grand Tourer Injected car, so Peugeot is bringing back the 208 GTI for a decent RM140k (CKD), with a 200HP/275Nm, 1.6-litre Twin Scroll Turbo with High Pressure (THP) engine, a variant of the popular Prince engine fitted to various Peugeot, Citroen and MINI cars. It comes equipped with a 6-speed close ratio transmission to make the fan happier, and no auto box, the way a GTI should be.
A lot of us does not even know what the heck GTI mean, and here is the answer from the internet. "GTI is an acronym for an Italian phrase 'Gran Turismo Iniezione' which
is a fuel injected grand tourer luxury automobile. It was first used on
the 1961 Maserati 3500 GTI which was a 2-door closed body car and
convertible made by an Italian car manufactures called Maserati."
Overall, the 208 GTI is similar to its standard sibling, with all the safety features a European car could offer. What make it stand out is the GTI emblem at the rear and side profile of the car, chrome side mirror cover, a redesigned trapezoidal front signal indicator, brake calipers in red, a lot of red interior add-ons, and the smell of the perfect Nappa leather. Even the floating meter cluster is surrounded by red ambient light.
Too bad, no test drive unit available and Naza could only provide the normal aspirated 120HP VTi unit for a spin, which drive good as well. The only draw back on the standard unit is the 4-speeder gearbox, where Peugeot should replace with the 6-speed unit, as in the 308 and 408.
It is a pity that Peugeot does not include navigation to the touch screen infotainment unit, but the centre console look much better than the dated unit from the 308 which is also share with the 408 and RCZ. The GTI is only available in Red or White, and the standard has additional choice of Black, Blue and Silver. All are boring choice of colours. The purple and rose quartz units available in Europe looks stunning the the lads and ladies. Why can't we have that in Malaysia.
Overall, the 208 is a nice car, and with 5-Year unlimited mileage warranty, it is a good deal. The 5-door costs RM86k, 3-door is at RM96k with bigger wheel and a panaromic roof and leather seats. All models fitted with all round airbags (6 in total), auto wiper and headlight, traction control, further with EURO NCAP 5-star safety rating. Let's hope the CKD unit uses the same metal parts and components that meet the 5-star rating, not any cost cutting replacement for this region.
