Peugeot 5008 long-term test

• The car Peugeot 5008 Allure Puretech 130 s/s
• Run by Jim Holder, editorial director
• Why it’s here To discover if real life can find any holes in the armoury of our favourite seven-seat SUV
• Needs to Make family life easy with a touch of flair and deliver low running costs across the board

Price £28,780 Price as tested £29,885 Miles covered 1543 Official fuel economy 54.3mpg Test economy 38.1mpg Options Metallic paint (£525); Black Diamond roof (£280); 19in alloy wheels (£300)

31 August – taking care of clutter

Mess. Clutter. Crucial reading/writing/drawing material. Call it what you will, but when your kids hit a certain age it becomes an inevitability that, wherever they go, so too will assorted bits of this, that and the other.

In our household, and I suspect many others, it is the back seat of the car that bears the brunt of this. Magazines sprawl, detached from their covers. Felt-tip pens – but never their lids – seek solace in every available crevice. And so it goes on.

Hooray, then, for underfloor storage, a standard fit in the Peugeot 5008. It’s not a new idea, but it is a brilliant one that many a car buyer could take for granted if they weren’t acquainted with the simple but effective benefits of being able to insist that everything goes away, out of sight, before the back doors are unlatched.

The only downside comes when the kids remember they have left something inside as you drive off. Needless to say, the combination of tight seatbelts, child seats and little arms means you have to stop the car to find whatever it is.

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