2020 Ford Focus vs Peugeot 308

What's the difference?

The Focus ST is going to be the perfect hot hatch for many – quick, practical, affordable and driveable every day, much like the Volkswagen Golf GTI. Others will want something hotter, sharper and wilder looking, but for the foreseeable future the ST is the most hardcore hatch Ford has to serve up.

I love this car. It looks fantastic and will impress you with its refined but sporty drive experience that betrays the numbers and its age.

I fear its tall pricing sets it against better value rivals, though, which ultimately will leave it stuck in its strange little French niche.

The Focus is up there with the best-looking small hatches on the market with its low-slung body and sleek profile, the long bonnet and the hungry looking grille. The ST version toughens the look without going over the top.

ST enhancements include the 19-inch ST wheels with 235/35 R19 tyres, the mesh grille, front and rear bumper treatment, the side skirts, roof-top spoiler, and the twin exhaust.

Inside there’s the ST steering wheel, aluminium gear knob, ST metallic pedals, the Ford Performance scuff plates, a dark headliner and ST floor mats.

Want the look without the price tag? The ST-Line Focus could be the answer because it shares many of the same body kit features, but doesn’t have the ST’s performance credentials to go with it.

ST owners might find the almost identical looks to the ST-Line a bit disappointing. Maybe Ford should have made more features ST specific? But ultimately, there are enough differences, including the wheels, the exhaust and diffuser, to signal to those in the know that this isn’t an ordinary Focus.

A nice touch which will make owners happy is the ‘debadging’ of the Focus lettering across the tailgate. Now, not every Focus can boast that.  

Fancy Recaro two-tone seats aside, the rest of the cabin styling in the Focus ST is underwhelming with all its black plastic surfaces and a steering wheel which not only has an overly busy design (with buttons galore), but looks old for a new-gen car.

An interesting cabin feature is the rotary gear shifter, which looks cool and helps create that spacious cockpit feel. What’s it like to use? I’ll cover that in the driving section below.  

The dimensions of the Focus ST are: 4378mm long, 1825mm wide and 1458mm tall.

It speaks to the excellent design of this car that you can’t tell this generation is over five years old. Still looking as contemporary as ever, the 308 has simple, classic hatchback lines accented by its pugnacious chrome-accented grille (see what I did there?) and big two-tone alloys which really fill those wheel arches.

The LED lights, which now feature progressive indicators and silver strip which frames the entire side window profile, complete the look

Again, it’s simple but distinctly European in its appeal.

Inside takes the design to unique but controversial places. I like the driver-centric molding to the pared-back dash design, which features a smattering of very tastefully applied chrome highlights and soft-touch surfaces, but it’s the wheel position and driver’s binnacle which divides people.

Personally, I love it. I love the tiny but strongly contoured steering wheel, love the way the elements are perched deep but high atop the dash, and the sporty seating position it creates.

Talk to my colleague Richard Berry though (who is 191cm/6'3" tall) and you’ll see some flaws with it. Like, he has to choose between being comfortable and having the top of the wheel block the instrument cluster. That has to be annoying.

If you’re my height though (182cm/6'0"), you’ll have no problems. I just wish, especially at this price, it had the cool new digital dash design featured in the larger 508.

The 308’s cabin is a comfortable place to be, too,with the soft touch plastics and leather trims extending from the dash to the door cards and centre console.

The screen is large and impressive at the dash centre, and I did appreciate how Peugeot wove its white/blue/red pattern on the centre of the seat design.

The Focus ST is four-door hatchback with five seats and that makes it far more practical than a coupe sports car, but keep in mind it’s still small.

Legroom is great for me in the second row (I’m 191cm/6'3" tall, though) and when sitting behind my driving position my knees touched the seat back. Headroom back there is good, and I was impressed by the large apertures on those rear doors which made climbing in and out easier than most hatches.

The boot in the Focus ST isn’t the biggest in the class at 273 litres. That’s 68 litres less than the cargo area in the regular Focus because the ST has a subwoofer stereo speaker and a space saver spare wheel living under the boot floor.

Is it big enough to use as a family car? Well it was for our little family with one small child, but only just – the size of the boot really limited what we could take with us.

The lack of directional air vents in the second row isn’t good news for passengers, although there are two cupholders, decent-sized door pockets and a 12V power outlet back there.

Up front there are another two cupholders, big door pockets, a wireless charger and USB port in the hidey hole under the dash, and another USB port in the centre console bin.

If you’re only occasionally going to have people in the back the Focus ST will suit you well with a spacious cockpit that has good head-, leg-, shoulder-, and elbowroom.

A note about those Recaro seats – they have broad backs but a small seat area which I found a bit little for my backside. So, for anybody with a big back and small bottom, this is the seat you’ve been looking for.

Annoyingly, one drawback of this simplistic but futuristic cabin design is a distinct lack of storage.

Front passengers get shallow door binnacles with a small bottle holder, a tiny glove box and centre console box, and a weird lone cupholder embedded in the centre console, which is small (barely fits a large coffee) and awkward to access.

Need a spot for a laptop or tablet, or any objects larger than a phone? There’s always the back seat, I suppose.

On the topic of the back seat, the nice seat trim and door cards extend to the rear which is a welcome aspect of the 308’s design, but again, the lack of storage is notable.

There are pockets on the back of each seat, and a small bottle holder in each door, as well as a drop-down armrest with two small cupholders again. There are no adjustable vents, but there is a single USB port on the back of the centre console.

Size-wise the back seat is okay. It doesn’t quite have the design magic of the Golf. Behind my own seating position, my knees are hard up against the front seat, although I do have plenty of arm room and headroom.

Thankfully, the 308 has an excellent boot area, with 435-litres on offer. It’s bigger than a Golf’s 380L and the 341L on offer in the Focus. In fact, the Peugeot’s boot is on par with some mid-size SUVs and had plenty of space to spare with my usual equipment stored alongside our largest 124L CarsGuide suitcase.

With the GT gone, the GT-Line is now top of the 308 range in Australia. About the same size as a Golf or a Ford Focus, the current generation 308 has danced with different price points throughout its somewhat tumultuous six-year history in Australia.

Priced at $36,490 (drive-away, with a MSRP of $34,990) its certainly far from the budget, circa $20k end of the hatch market, competing with the likes of the VW Golf 110TSI Highline ($34,990), Ford Focus Titanium ($34,490), or Hyundai i30 N-Line Premium ($35,590).

Peugeot tried the budget thing once with entry-level variants like the Access and the current Allure, a strategy which clearly didn’t buy the French brand much more than a niche in the Australian market.

Then again, outside of the VW Golf and premium makes, other Euro rivals like Renault, Skoda, and Ford’s Focus have struggled to make much of an impact in recent years.

Equipment level in the Peugeot is good, regardless. Included are those impressive 18-inch alloys which I loved on the GT, a 9.7-inch multimedia touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity as well as built-in navigation and DAB digital radio, full LED front lighting, a sporty body kit (again visually almost identical to the GT), leather trimmed wheel, cloth seats with a unique GT-Line pattern, a colour display in the driver’s instrument cluster, push-start ignition with keyless entry, and a panoramic sunroof which almost reaches the length of the car.

There is also a decent safety suite explored later in this review.

The kit isn’t bad but is missing some of the more cutting edge features we see in rivals at this price, like wireless phone charging, holographic head-up displays, digital dash clusters, and even basic things like full leather interior trim and electrically adjustable seats.

Oh, and the great ‘Ultimate Red’ colour worn by our test car is a $1050 option. 'Magnetic Blue' (the only other colour I’d consider on this car) is a bit cheaper at $690.

The 2.3-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder engine is the heart of the Focus ST and it’s a thumping, noisy one, making plenty of power at 206kW and oodles of torque at 420Nm.

The Focus ST is a front-wheel drive car and while a six-speed manual gearbox is offered, the car tested here had the seven-speed automatic transmission.

Manuals can be tiresome to use daily in heavy traffic, but if driving is a real passion for you then you’ll know how much more engaging it is shifting gears yourself.

Driving enthusiasts might also be disappointed by the auto transmission in Focus ST, which is eager to shift up to higher gears and then quick to change its mind. Meaning I had to keep the car in 'Sport' or manual mode to stop it shuffling cogs incessantly.

So, good marks for the engine but the score is brought down by the auto transmission.

The GT-Line has the same engine as the lesser Allure, a 1.2-litre, three-cylinder turbocharged petrol unit.

It produces a less-than-impressive sounding 96kW/230Nm, but there’s more to the story than just the numbers. We’ll explore this in the driving section.

It’s mated to a six-speed (torque converter) automatic (produced by Aisin). Sad you can no longer get the eight-speed auto which the 308 GT had mated to its more powerful four-cylinder engine.

Ford says that over a combination of open and urban roads the Focus ST with the automatic transmission will have used 8.8L/100km. I more than doubled that serving suggestion.

Starting with a full tank (52 litres) I drove 134.4km and needed 23.46 litres of petrol to top the tank back up to full. That works out to be 17.5L/100km. The car’s trip computer reckoned I used an average of 16.8L/100km.

Either way that’s thirsty, but not surprising because the ST has a high output four cylinder and my driving was mainly urban based, with a dash to the bush for some twisty roads.

My colleague Matt Campbell tested the manual version of the Focus ST and saw better mileage.

Anyway, who’s buying a high-performance hatch thinking it will be economical? Talking of fuel and money, you’ll need to feed the Focus ST premium unleaded petrol.

The 308 GT-Line has an official/combined cycle fuel consumption claim of just 5.0L/100km. Sounds plausible given its small engine, but your mileage may vary.

Mine varied a lot. After a week behind the wheel in predominantly urban environments my Pug was showing a computer-reported figure of a less-impressive 8.5L/100km. I was quite enjoying driving it, though.

The 308 requires 95RON mid-grade unleaded petrol and has a fuel tank capacity of 53 litres for a maximum theoretical range of 1233km between fills. Good luck matching that.

It does have a low CO2 emissions rating of 113g/km in order to comply with the latest strict Euro6 requirements in its home market.

My colleague Matt Campbell reviewed the manual version of the Focus ST back in May 2020, and said he couldn’t wait to pilot the automatic, but I think he may have tested the better option when it comes to sporty driving.

I say that, though, not having tested the manual ST, but I’d bet my gear-shifting arm it’s more fun to drive, and that’s because the automatic seven-speed was constantly leaping up to higher gears and the only way to restrain it was by choosing Sport mode.

Even then the transmission kept changing its mind about which gear it wanted. But really, that's the only bad news when it comes to driving. The rest is all good.

Yup, the Focus ST not only does everything else right, it does it superbly. There’s the steering which is accurate and has great feedback, although plant the right foot and you’ll feel it squirm with a smidge of torque steer.

There’s the acceleration: 0-100km/h in six seconds. That’s not going to rip your face off, but it will put a smile on it.

Traction is also good, especially for a front-wheel drive car with this much grunt. And the chassis is taut and offers a great connection to what’s happening underneath you.

I was especially impressed by the ride. Sure, potholes could unsettle it, but for the most part in 'Comfort' or Sport mode the ride was composed, planted and almost comfortable (some family members felt it was a bit firm).

Helping pull the ST up are big brakes – 330mm rotors at the front and 302mm at the rear. I agree with Matt, in his review of the manual version, that while adequate, this set-up doesn't deliver the stopping power expected from anchors this big on a small car.

Now the rotary gear shifter – impressive to look at, just not to use. Ergonomically, I find it’s easier to pull or push a shifter than to turn a dial.

You may get used to it over time, but I never have despite driving various cars with them for a decade. Dials are great for adjusting things in small increments like the volume of the radio or climate control temperature but not for important stuff such as selecting Reverse or Drive.

I can confidently say the 308 is as good to drive as it is to look at. Despite its average sounding power figures, the 308 feels as though it’s more punchy than its more powerful VW Golf rival.

The 230Nm of peak torque is available from a low 1750rpm, giving you a nice dollop of pulling power after an initial second of turbo-lag, but the 308’s real trick is its slender 1122kg weight.

This gives it a spritely feeling both under acceleration and while cornering, which is just plain fun. The three-cylinder engine produces a distant but satisfying gravelly rasp, and the six-speed transmission, while not as lightening fast as a VW-group dual-clutch, advances through the cogs with confidence and purpose.

The ride is firm overall, with seemingly very little travel, but consistently surprised me with its forgiving nature over some of the worst road corrugations. It’s a happy medium – toward the firm side, but nothing extreme.

The relative quietness in the cabin is also impressive, with the engine barely making itself known most of the time, and road noise only really increasing above 80km/h.

The steering is direct and responsive, letting you point the hatch accurately. This feeling is enhanced in 'Sport' mode, which stiffens up the ratio and, naturally, makes the dial cluster glow red.

While it’s more of a driver’s car than most it does still suffer from annoying moments of turbo lag off the mark, exacerbated by the all-too-keen stop-start system which frequently cuts the engine at inconvenient times in slow-moving traffic.

It does somehow yearn for more power, too, especially with its well sorted ride, but that ship sailed with its GT big brother earlier this year.

The current 308 does not actually carry an ANCAP rating, as the five-star rating from 2014 only applies to now-discontinued diesel variants.

Regardless, the 308 now has a competitive active safety suite consisting of auto emergency braking (works from 0-140km/h and detects pedestrians and cyclists), lane keep assist with lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, traffic sign recognition, and driver attention alert. There’s no rear cross-traffic alert or adaptive cruise on the 308.

Outside of those features there are six airbags, an the expected suite of stability, brake, and traction controls.

The 308 has two ISOFIX and three top-tether child-seat mounting points across the second row.

The Focus ST is covered by Ford’s five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty. There’s seven years of roadside assistance, too, provided you service it with Ford.

Service intervals are every 12 months or 15,000km and capped at $299 for the first four services.

Peugeot offers a competitive five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty alongside its main rivals including VW and Ford.

Service pricing is fixed for the life of the warranty, too, with each 12 month/15,000km service costing between $391 and $629 for a yearly average of $500.80. These services are far from cheap but are promised to be inclusive of most expendable items.