Peugeot 408 vs Bentley Flying Spur

What's the difference?

Unveiled globally in 2022 before arriving here in late 2024 as a plug-in hybrid GT, the Peugeot 408 has been a niche player for the long-established French brand with less than 100 examples finding homes here last year.

But 2025 marked the transition to a new ‘plug-less’ mild-hybrid powertrain for the mid-size crossover-style SUV with the hope it may take a bigger swing at segment heavyweights.

We spent a week with the current 408 GT Premium Hybrid to see if its efficiency-focused petrol-electric set-up has what it takes to win a spot on your upscale five-seat SUV shopping list.

In any other super car, it would seem deeply strange, wrong even, to loll (and LOL) in the back seats while a colleague blasts you around a race track at insane speeds, and not just because cars with V12 engines making 575kW and 1000Nm don’t normally have more than two seats.

The Bentley Flying Spur Speed is, of course, no ordinary car, it is a super sedan, a luxe limousine crossed with a rocket ship, and if Sir wants to get to the rooftop helipad in a spectacular hurry, then these are the back seats to be sitting in.

We flew to Japan, and the spectacular setting of the Magarigawa Club, a members-only race track carved out of the rolling hills outside Tokyo at a rumoured cost of $US2 billion, to try the back seats, and the driver’s seat, of the new and very impressive Flying Spur Speed.