Earlier this year, I went to the Grammys in Los Angeles – I expected it to be ostentatious and debauched, but instead it was eight soul-numbing hours in an over-lit arena, watching Pink perform a curiously unerotic trapeze act while dressed in three and a half sequins and a marabou feather.

I mention this because since the Grammys, whenever someone mentions award shows, a small part of me crumples. So when I learned that this week’s review car, the redesigned Peugeot 308, was named winner of the European Car of the Year 2014 at the 84th Geneva Motor Show, I inwardly winced and shook my head, and imagined a ceremony in which it performed a risqué duet with Robin Thicke, wearing little more than a leotard and a prayer.

Thankfully, the Peugeot 308 is considerably more understated than that. It’s a five-door hatchback that’s compact but with ample boot space. It’s not the most splendiferous car to behold, and there’s certainly no marabou feathering, but I rather like its quiet composure.

I take it out on the tiles to toast its Motor Show win, past the fancy hotels and the kind of spangly nightspots frequented by award-winning celebrities. It is not as glamorous as I had hoped: swarms of bright-voiced young women drift into the road, burly young men squabble with rickshaw drivers and paparazzi clutter the pavements.

Slightly embarrassed, I direct my gaze inside the car. The dashboard stares back, steady and sphinx-like. As with the Peugeot 208, the 308 has a small steering wheel, so you’re looking over it, not through it, to see the dials, and it has a central, easily navigable touchscreen control instead of the traditional scrabble of buttons. There’s an elegance and a simplicity to its layout that extends to the rest of the interior, and rather puts me in mind of the bathroom of a luxury hotel: fuss-free, and finely considered. It’s also a refined drive, smooth and quiet and responsive, making elegant work of the rowdy streets. And later, out on more open road, it appears to have more power than you might anticipate, enjoying its six-speed gearbox and overtaking with no strain.

Quibbles: that steering wheel has a flimsiness that means you tend to regard it the way the surly student appraises the substitute teacher: as if it might never quite be in control of proceedings. I’m also not fond of the modern penchant for accessing the heating controls via the touchscreen – it feels fiddly and remote, somehow.

All that boot space had to catch up with the Peugeot somewhere, and it’s in the back seats, which would become very slender little knee-crushing ledges were the front seats carrying taller passengers. But this is perhaps less of a family car than other hatchbacks – it’s a bit more grown up than that.

We nudge on past lovers’ tiffs and raucous singalongs. The pubs are emptying now, the revellers making their way to bus stops and nightclub dance floors, and as we sit at the lights a hen party straggles past us in a cacophony of whistles and cheers. The Peugeot seems out of place here; too sober, too reserved. But this pleases me: in a world of ritz and flashiness, sometimes subtlety wins out.

Peugeot 308 SW

Price From £14,895
Top speed 121mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 12.1 seconds
Combined fuel consumption 85.6mpg
CO2 emissions 88g/km
Eco rating 8/10
Cool rating 8/10

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• This article was edited on 6 November 2014. In the endnote on the original, we gave the wrong figures for speed, acceleration and fuel consumption. These have been corrected.