If you have a little over £20,000 to spend on a seven-seat tow car, you could do a lot worse than the Peugeot 5008 2.0 HDi 150 Sport.

On paper, the HDi engine is far from the most powerful in this class, but it was strong enough to reverse car and caravan up a shallow slope with no protest from the clutch.

On the 1-in-6 test hill the electronic parking brake held the 5008 steady with none of the uncertainty of some cars’ conventional handbrakes, and the flexible engine and sensibly chosen first gear made driving to the top of the hill simple.

Get stuck behind a tractor out in the sticks, and you shouldn’t be there for long. The 30-60mph time of 14.6 seconds is impressive for a car with just 150bhp. The engine remains smooth and quiet while getting up to speed.

Our performance tester was less happy with the 5008 through the lane-change test, where the back of the car soon got into an argument with the caravan about which direction to take. The car always won, though. The Al-Ko ATC system also detected some movement from the caravan when slowing down from 70mph.

With the rear two seats stowed away, the Peugeot coped with a full load of holiday luggage. Peugeot confirmed that the slim spare wheel is safe to tow with, although our practicality judge was disappointed to note that the towing limit drops if you load the car up to the Gross Vehicle Weight.