Peugeot 208 Hybrid FE: Driven

Lightweight hot hatches a thing of the past? The 780kg 208 FE begs to differ

There's hot and there's hybrid. The two have been introduced before but the union has either been a damp squib (Honda CR-Z) or supermodel fantasy (McLaren P1).

Hybrid FE based on 1.0-litre, 68hp 208

This time Peugeot blends the two in a project that uses racecar tech and knowledge to create a hottish hybrid hatchback that has officially recorded 149mpg but will still dash to 60mph in eight seconds. And that's without charging the batteries from a plug.

After a long explanation and a short drive of the 208 Hybrid FE at a test track near Paris earlier this week, we started to question what it means to be a PHer.

Then again anyone bonkers enough to rip out the front and rear suspension and replace all the springs and torsion bars with two radical glass-fibre blades in the name of weight-saving and 'what-if?' is welcome in our camp.

The guys responsible definitely aren't the beard and sandal brigade. All are from the company's racing arm Peugeot Sport and most were refuges from Peugeot's axed 908 hybrid Le Mans project.

Electric motor comes from 908 Le Mans racer

"Economy and racing is exactly the same," project leader Christophe Mary told us enthusiastically.

By the end he'd managed to convince us. The car started out life as a bog-standard 208 runaround with a one-litre three-cylinder engine. This is a 68hp shopper just about saved from plodder status by its 975kg weight.

But the Peugeot Sport guys managed to remove more than 200kg from this and made it so economical they'd cut CO2 output by more than half.

The 908 donated its tiny electric engine designed to push out 120hp of power, but here restricted to 40hp. A 90-cell lithium ion battery pack supplied the juice.

Just like the 908 hybrid was going to run under electric power in the pit lane, the 208 FE moves away silently and essentially push starts the car so the engine turns over on inertia alone. Great, now they can whip out the starter motor. The weight reduction has started.

Longer tail contributes to 0.25Cd

And because they've converted some of the battery power to 12V, they can run all the electrics off the lithium ion unit. So out goes the 5kg standard car battery. No alternator needed either - another 4kg gone.

By redesigning the engine's water jacket they've reduced the volume of cooling liquid by FIVE times. Of course then they could shrink the radiator. We had a peer in the engine bay and it was just like in that terrible Griff Rhys Jones Vauxhall ad from the late 90s where he was loading shopping under the bonnet of an old Cresta - gaps everywhere.

Of course the hybrid gubbins added about 40kg, including a 25kg battery, but the engineers reckoned with all the other savings, the combined drivetrain weight was exactly the same as the original 1.0-litre car.

Mary refuted our criticism that all the exotic materials meant the hybrid FE was every bit a fantasy car as the McLaren P1. "If you make a clever design you could use 70 per cent of this in a normal car," he told us.

ECO mode or FUN mode?

Okay, maybe not the pricey titanium engine conrods, which were adapted from the 908 and weighed as little as a slim fountain pen. The whole three-cylinder engine was reworked for economy, including designing a new cylinder head weighing half as much. Almost everything inside that moved was coated in low-friction Diamond-Like Carbon and bathed in a very low-viscosity 0W12 oil from partners Total that reduced resistance even when cold. The result, they reckoned, was the same levels of friction at 40 degrees as nearer operating temperature at 80 degrees.

The continuing virtuous circle meant that 149mpg could theoretically give over 600 miles from a tiny 20-litre tank. Saving weight again. Those amazing suspension blades removed 25kg, and a composite bonnet took out 7kg.

There was plenty to say about the aerodynamics, which cut the drag to 0.25Cd using tricks like extending the tail, fitting tall skinny tyres, and mostly blocking the grille.

46g/km and 0-62 in 8 seconds? Cool hybrid!

But now we wanted to drive the thing. The jet whine of the electric motor gave a fascinating insight into what the ill-fated 908 hybrids might have sounded like, and our first instinct was to switch it straight into FUN mode, which keeps the three-cylinder motor running permanently after starting.

First though, an ECO-mode run-though and the FE whirred away keenly before the engine arrived with a thump at 50km/h. The gearbox is the same EGS automated manual system Peugeot and Citroen have long tortured drivers with but here made seamless because the electric motor fills in those lurching torque dips on changes. Smart take note.

We're basically driving up and down a straight track so had no bends to measure how its lightness helped dynamically, but the steering was direct and feelsome through those skinny 145-section tyres. Finally we got a FUN run and the FE smartly jumped forward when we showed a heavy boot. The 208 GTI is quicker, but the fascinating FE Hybrid is nonetheless a very cheering glimpse into a future where professional petrolheads won't have forsaken production cars, but instead will be striving to insert the comical into economical.

PEUGEOT 208 HYBRID FE
Engine: 1.2-litre 3-cyl, direct-injection / electric motor
Transmission: Five-speed automated manual, front-wheel drive
Power (hp): 107
Torque (lb ft): 111
0-62mph: 8 seconds
Top speed: N/A
Weight: 780kg
MPG: 149mpg
CO2: 46g/km
Price: Not revealed. But put it this way, 1 million miles at 149mpg and it still won't have paid for itself