IT has taken a while for Fleet News to secure a long-term loan of the 2002 International Car of the Year, but finally a silver Peugeot 307 appeared in the Fleet Towers' car park.

The model in question is the range-topping diesel, the Dturbo, and, for now, the 307 hatchback with the highest on-the-road price at £16,660 for the five-door.

Boasting a 110bhp 2.0-litre HDi engine, the Dturbo assumes the role of the high-performance diesel in the 307 range, while offering theoretical fuel economy of more than 50mpg.

It is also fitted with PSA Peugeot-Citroen's particle trap, ensuring harmful emissions are kept to a minimum.

The Dturbo is the diesel equivalent of the petrol 307 2.0 XSi, with similar power outputs along with styling enhancements in the name of something called 'sport'.

Yes, the Dturbo has torso-hugging front seats, 17-inch alloys, part-leather seats, aluminium-effect trim on the centre console and front fog lamps. Although its on-the-road price seems high at £16,660 (£16,935 when you add metallic paint as on our test car) it is remarkably well equipped. There is ABS, traction control and an electronic stabilisation programme (ESP), along with six airbags, a five-CD autochanger, trip computer, climate control, cruise control, four electric windows and air conditioned glovebox to name but a few items.

I was a little disappointed to find the Dturbo only comes with the 'titan' interior 'ambience' pack, which means black trim with the exception of the aluminium bits. I'm quite a fan of the 'cobalt', 'ivory' and 'cedar' interior colours available.

It's early days yet and our 307's engine probably has a few thousand miles more to go before it comes into its stride.

It will probably do the 0-62mph sprint in 11 seconds as Peugeot's figures suggest, but it has underperformed in the fuel economy department so far.

Despite being driven by two of our lightest footed staff, myself and our fuel economy guru managing editor John Maslen, the 307 has so far been able to do no better than 43.5mpg. This is well shy of the official combined figure of 54.1mpg.

Another minor disappointment is on the build quality side – although the car is fine in general, the carpet in the driver's footwell keeps coming away from the door sill and frequently has to be tucked back in. The 307 appears to be doing well in general, but we expect things to improve over the next six months before it gains our seal of approval to go with the International Car of the Year title.