Peugeot Expert 2019 review: Standard 150 Auto

The latest Expert is built on the PSA group’s modular EMP2 platform, which delivers a significant 100kg-plus weight reduction over previous generations. Its 4959mm length and 2010mm width is matched with a practical 1930mm height, which ensures it can access city centre and shopping centre car parks.

The front-wheel drive layout features simple and rugged semi-McPherson strut front suspension, coil-spring lower wishbone rear suspension, four-wheel ventilated disc brakes and a tight 12.4-metre turning circle.

Externally, there’s the usual black front bumper common to most workhorse breeds, with matching black door handles, mirrors, hubcaps and side rubbing strips. The cargo bay can be accessed through unglazed sliding doors on both sides and a pair of glazed symmetrical barn doors at the rear with 180-degree opening, wipers and demister function.

The latest Expert features black bumpers with matching black door handles, mirrors, hubcaps and side rubbing strips.

The cabin is separated from the cargo bay by a glazed bulkhead, which insulates the cabin from cargo bay noise and doubles as a load barrier. The cabin design is neat and functional, with seating for up to three adults (at a squeeze, better with two) and large doors that open wide for easy entry and exit.

Our only gripe is that the centre seat headrest, combined with the join of the rear barn doors, blocks most of the vision through the rear-view mirror. Fortunately, the rear-view camera and parking sensors can compensate for this lack of vision when reversing, but it’s difficult to see what’s directly behind you when driving.

Peugeot claims a combined figure of 6.4 litres/100km but the dash display was showing 8.3 after our 358km of testing, which included different roads and a variety of payloads up to a snip under one tonne.

However, our figure calculated from actual fuel bowser and tripmeter readings worked out at 7.8 which is not far north of the official figure and excellent economy for a mid-size van.

Based on our figures you could expect an excellent ‘real world’ driving range of around 880km from its 69-litre tank.

PCA advises that Australian-spec Experts are fitted with a heavy-duty suspension package, resulting in a 5mm rise in ride height and increased GVM rating. Therefore, Peugeot claims a 1908kg kerb weight for our test vehicle, with a 3100kg GVM and impressive 1358kg payload rating.

However, the payload rating is not based on the published 1908kg kerb weight but a 166kg lower 'base weight' of 1742kg after fuel, fluids, auto and notional driver are deducted! So, to cut a long story short, the 3100kg GVM and 1358kg payload are the key figures here.

Our test vehicle is also rated to tow up to 1500kg of braked trailer, but with a GCM (or how much it can legally carry and tow at the same time) of 4200kg, that would require reducing the payload by a substantial  400kg to avoid exceeding the GCM. Even so, that would still leave almost one tonne of payload capacity, so this is a useful set of numbers for many job requirements.

The cargo hold has a 1640mm internal height and 5.8 cubic metres of load volume. Its floor is 2512mm long and 1636mm wide with 1255mm between the rear wheel housings, allowing it to carry two 1165mm-square Aussie pallets.

The cargo bay has a high standard of finish, with all walls and doors lined to waist height with no exposed wall cavities.

The load floor can also be partly extended by opening a hatch in the lower left bulkhead and raising the outer passenger seat to provide access to the passenger footwell. This stretches the load floor by 1162mm to an expansive 3674mm, ideal for carrying extra-long items like timber, PVC/copper pipe or rolls of carpet. The passenger footwell is also fitted with a handy load anchorage point for this purpose.

The cargo bay has a high standard of finish, with walls and doors lined to waist height leaving no exposed wall cavities. There’s no protective liner for the painted load floor as standard, but there’s a total of eight load anchorage points, a handy 12-volt outlet in the left rear pillar and lighting front and rear. Forklift loading is possible through the side sliding doors (960mm opening) and rear barn doors. There’s also extra carrying capacity on the roof, with a series of brackets already in place to mount roof racks. 

The cabin also offers numerous storage options. There’s three storage bins in each door, with the biggest capable of holding the largest of bottles. There’s also a cup/small bottle holder on each side of the dash-pad and an open A4-sized storage bin in the centre. The passenger side gets a lidded glovebox, open shelf and a large storage cubby with audio jack and 12-volt outlet.

Inside there's plenty of storage options including three storage bins in each door.

The under-seat storage is also clever and useful. The centre passenger base cushion rotates forward through 90 degrees to reveal a large insulated box underneath, which is ideal for keeping meals or drinks hot or cold. The centre seat backrest also rotates forward through 90 degrees to reveal a small work desk.

Raising the outer passenger base cushion also reveals a large storage area beneath. Or it can rotate  into a vertical storage position against the bulkhead, which provides clear access to the passenger floor when long items in the cargo bay are inserted through the lower bulkhead hatch.

We loaded 830kg into the cargo bay, which with our driver equalled a 930kg payload. That's short of the maximum payloads we usually test at, but as the Australian-spec one tonne-plus payload rating had not been clarified at the time of testing we kept it just below 1000kg.

Even so, you wouldn’t know it even had such a sizeable payload on board, such was the negligible difference between empty and loaded. The rear suspension compressed 47mm and the front dropped 32mm, but there was still plenty of travel remaining and no significant change in engine performance, braking and steering, which was most impressive.

The cargo hold has enough space for two 1165mm-square Aussie pallets, here it's loaded with 800kg.

It gobbled up our 13 per cent gradient 2.0km long set climb, easily maintaining the 60km/h speed limit in third gear and just over 2000rpm. It did it so easily in fact, we tried it again in a manually-selected fourth gear. That’s when we discovered that manual mode is actually semi-manual mode, because when it decided that the rpm had dropped too low it automatically shifted down to third.

We discovered the same effect when trialling engine braking on the way down in a manually- selected second gear. With almost a tonne to restrain, the engine spun up to 4500rpm on overrun (5250rpm redline) before suddenly shifting up to third. This might work fine as a defence mechanism for the engine, but it can also give you a nasty surprise if you’re relying on engine braking during a long descent and it suddenly shifts up and starts increasing its road speed.

Five years/200,000km warranty with scheduled service intervals of 12 months/20,000km whichever occurs first. Capped pricing for first five scheduled services ranges between $467 and $790.