A chance conversation at a press lunch resulted in Peugeot
lending me its latest sports coupé for my 10-day jaunt through western France. It
wouldn’t be a test drive as such – just the opportunity to see how the
low-slung RCZ sports coupé would cope on narrow winding country roads leading
to hilltop villages as well as long stretches of motorway.
It would be a little while before I could show off this
really quite beautiful car, however. The “dolphin-blue” RCZ sat patiently below
deck during the civilised overnight crossing on Brittany Ferries from
Portsmouth to St Malo. And then it went straight to the underground car park of
the Grand Hotel des Thermes while we explored the underrated port of St Malo.
But finally the car had a full six hours of being on view – and duly admired by
passing motorists – as we headed south through the Pays de la Loire’s lush green
countryside and Poitou-Charente’s endless sunflower fields towards the
Dordogne.
I could see why the car turned heads. It resembles the Audi
TT in shape and design, but has none of the WAG stigma attached. It’s also considerably
cheaper than an equally tooled-up TT: mine was the six-gear GT HDi with all the
bells and whistles and its on-the-road price is just over £25,000.
It was also immediately obvious that taking a fuel-efficient
diesel on a long road trip was a good idea. The display showing the remaining
miles before the next fill-up actually went up as we cruised along the motorway;
the car was dutifully calculating that a steady speed along a smooth road was
doing wonders for fuel efficiency. In fact, I didn’t refill until after 550
miles, and there was still fuel left in the tank.
I could also set the speed limit to prevent me from unwittingly
breaking the law. Going at breakneck speed along French autoroutes is becoming a thing of the past, I’ve noticed over the
years – at least among French drivers. Satnavs aren’t allowed to show locations
of speed cameras any more, but then I had no desire to go above the 80mph motorway
limit. And the car’s low position gave me the impression I was going much
faster than I was.
It was only on the rather bumpy D roads towards my
destination near Bergerac that I noticed that the extra-wide tyres and 19-inch
wheels made the ride a bit harder. But then on the stretches where single-lane
carriages briefly opened into two lanes – uphill, as they invariably do – the
engine’s power made overtaking easy work.
We could nip past lumbering Dutch caravans that clogged the
roads leading to the Dordogne’s most popular medieval villages: Beynac, Les
Eyzies, La Roque-Gageac, Domme. Sunflowers lit up the fields along the D roads
between the half-timbered village houses of Issigeac and Monpazier’s handsome
arcaded square. These roads were quieter, made for pootling along – which
suited the RCZ just fine.
The car would have plenty of time to glide through its six
gears as we sped along the motorway through Limousin on the way north to the
Loire Valley. The landscape flattened out somewhat as we reached villages along
the confluence of the Loire and Vienne rivers, broken up occasionally by limestone
ridges housing troglodyte caves. The car was getting heavier by this point, as
the temptation to stock up on Saumur reds and rosés was proving too much. Luckily
the boot was much bigger than you would expect from a coupé, with two narrow
seats in the rear adding extra room. Indeed, the whole interior was remarkably
spacious, with plenty of legroom and comfortable sculpted front seats.
There was just enough time to fill the boot to capacity with
a last-minute shop near Calais before the return ferry crossing and the drive
home. I was hoping against hope that the Peugeot driver might get lost on his
way to pick up the car. Sadly he didn’t.
Images © Adam Batterbee
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