Open mouth Outlander

By Ewan Kennedy
EUROPEAN car makers, apparently wisely at the time, refrained from entering the SUV market for many years.
They generally felt it would be a passing fad and that buyers would return to driving small economical cars.
That didn’t happen, so European car companies are now scrambling around catching up on SUV designs.
Peugeot is the latest to do so, with a medium-duty model called the 4007.
Rather than outlay enormous sums of research and development money and starting from scratch, the iconic French marque formed an alliance with the Japanese Mitsubishi company.
Look at the side and the back of the new for 2010 Peugeot 4007 and you will see a vehicle that looks suspiciously like a Mitsubishi Outlander … because that’s what it is.
At the front, though, the 4007 is most definitely a Peugeot.
The ‘wide-mouth’ look that has caused controversy amongst car lovers for the last few years is most evident in the new SUV.
Stop and look at the pics for a moment – it couldn’t be anything other than a Peugeot could it? And that’s a great asset in these times when people complain that all cars look the same.
Interestingly, the new Peugeot 4007 is sold with either five or seven seats.
Appearances aside, there’s a lot of Peugeot under the bonnet of the 4007.
The company has been developing some excellent turbo-diesel engines lately, and the 2.2-litre four-cylinder unit behind that big grille is one of the latest designs.
Torque of 250 Nm is produced when the engine is turning at only 1250 revs, and reaches its peak of a hefty 380 Nm at 2000 rpm.
The engine is fitted with an exhaust particulate filter to further minimise already-low pollutant levels.
Not many manufacturers choose to do this as the Australian emission regulations are less stringent that the European ones. Full marks to Peugeot for doing this.
The confidence of the Australian Peugeot importer in this diesel engine is shown by the fact that no petrol powered 4007s are offered.
Transmission options are a five-speed manual and six-speed double-clutch automatic.
These choices vary from model to model so check with your dealer to see if they can provide the exact specification to meet your needs.
Peugeot rates the vehicle as being capable of towing up to two tonnes if the caravan/trailer has brakes fitted.
Mitsubishi has been an expert in the 4WD field for many decades so the Peugeot 4007 uses the latest systems as seen in the Outlander.
However, Peugeot is famed for its smooth riding and driver-oriented suspension dynamics, so the 4007 looks like having the best of both worlds.
At this time we haven’t been able to test drive the new Peugeot 4007 as the first batch of imports is extremely limited.
We anticipate getting into on in the first few weeks of 2010.
The complete Peugeot 4007 range, with prices (excluding government and dealer delivery charges) is: ST 2.2-litre diesel five-seat wagon: $45,490 (manual), $47,990 (automatic)
ST 2.2-litre diesel seven-seat wagon: $49,190 (automatic); SV 2.2-litre diesel seven-seat wagon: $54,190 (automatic).