The easiest way to guarantee good weather during winter? Fit cold weather tyres.

At least that what it appears so far this year. The Peugeot was shod with its super-soft Michelin rubbers midway through October in line with the advice by the tyre manufacturer.

Since then, the temperature has barely dipped below 14 degC, some way off the 7 deg.C threshold below which these tyres operate at their peak.

So far, then, I’ve little to report on the benefits of cold weather tyres, although in the warmer weather they seem to make the 508’s steering a touch heavier.

There were a few initial teething problems with the balancing, too, resulting in some steering wheel shudder at speed. A Saturday morning trip to the local ATS Euromaster soon sorted that out.

According to the technician, it’s fairly common due to the difficulties in accurately balancing cold weather tyres – worth alerting your drivers about.

A minor technical glitch occurred recently when the car decided to reconfigure its date/time back to the default setting, in this case, amusingly, January 1, 2007 – sometime before the 508 was born. After re-setting, it’s not happened since.

That aside, the 508 continues to perform admirably, particularly on long journeys when the smooth chassis and cosseting seats provide comfort and support in equal measure.

The car has settled down to return 54.2mpg; on my next long trip I’ll zero the trip computer to see how much higher it will go – officially this 2.0-litre 163bhp HDi model should average 57.6mpg on the combined setting.