It is not very hard to engineer a bad automobile. One could say it is perhaps even easy to do. Although, Peugeot seems to have worked very hard making their Rifter a terrible product.
To be frank, it is quite admirable to experience such an achievement. Peugeot had hundreds of people working hundreds of hours and spent millions of euros so that in the end, they could make an ugly, uncomfortable and frustrating vehicle to drive. It raises the following question: has anybody at Peugeot driven the Rifter before releasing it to the public? Anyone with at least 5 minutes of driving experience would agree that it is not a good product and that it should go right back to the drawing board. Actually, before even stepping into the van – simply by looking at it – one would say that the Rifter needed to be altogether reconsidered. Still, here I am, with its keys in my hand. 

©Tobias André ( http://www.frenchdriver.fr )

The Rifter feels like a group project where none of the participants communicated with each other; nothing feels put together with thought. 
For example, one of the things that irritated me the most was the armrests. The person working on the inside door panel, made it so that one could rest his arm in two different places. The first option is the window ledge, and the second option is a lower dedicated armrest. Clearly, our door-panel designer has never spoken to the seat designer. The armrest that extends from the seat is at a height in between the two on the door. So your elbows, therefore your shoulders, and thus your back, are never at the same height. So, get ready for crippling back pain after a long drive. This kind of nonsense could have been easily avoided if the members of the group project had communicated with one another. 

Driving the Rifter is an adventure in and of itself. Actually, the Peugeot Rifter is such a memorable vehicle to drive, I have decided that it should be everyone’s first driving experience. It will help people understand what to avoid. The Throttle is way too light and twitchy, it’s impossible to come to a complete stop smoothly, the steering is incredibly heavy and imprecise and last but not least, the driving aids are, as usual, incredibly irritating. What baffles me is that the problem isn’t that Peugeot calibrated all those controls incorrectly for an MPV. The problem is that this steering column, brake system, and throttle, are terribly calibrated no matter what vehicle you put it in. The worst part is that Peugeot has a hefty selection of good-quality spare parts in their personal catalogue. They also know how to correctly calibrate driving controls, as we can see with their city cars. Yet, they chose not to use any of their skill set for the Rifter.

The Rifter is such an incredible concoction of terrible engineering and design, that I started wondering: is there anything good about it? Willing to settle for mediocre at this point, here is what I found:

• It is a real seven-seater. Obviously, you’ll lose some trunk space when the third row is in, but it’s still decent. 
• It has big rear-view mirrors.
• It’s ugly enough that you won’t care about body damage. Because, let’s be honest, it can’t look worse.
• It holds its value well. So you can sell it, get your money back, and buy anything else (no matter what you get, as long as it is not a VW t-roc, you’ll be upgrading).

The saying goes “comedy comes in threes”. Well, the Peugeot Rifter has, (1) terrible engineering, (2) horrific interior and exterior design, and (3) for the punchline, the base price in 2018 was 24,300€. 
Turns out, the French have a complex sense of humour. 
One I clearly do not understand.