Peugeot’s new coupe is visually stunning but does it drive as well as it looks?
“I love it when a plan comes together,” said George Peppard at the end of every episode of The A Team.
And, without a battery of special-effects explosions or Mr T’s dubious welding skills, Peugeot must be thinking the same.
Two years is a short gestation yet, just 24 months after we first drove this pretty little concept coupé, the RCZ will be in the showrooms costing just over £20,000.
How did Peugeot’s engineers do it?
They just used what they had already. “We wanted this car to be made,” says Boris Reinmöller, the RCZ’s designer, “that’s why we used the 308 platform and its nose.”
This is also the first Peugeot for many years to use letters in its name rather than numbers.
While RC sounds a little like “arse” when pronounced in French, it is the Gallic version of GT or gran turismo, the Italian designation for a fast touring car.
Peugeot has a long history of producing lithe and lovely coupés, such as the amazing 401/402 models that debuted the first-ever folding steel roof.
These still provide inspiration for the multitude of Peugeot concepts that appear on the Paris Salon stand every two years, then sadly disappear.
Unlike this one, which will be made, in Austria, at the Magna Steyr plant in Graz, which has a solid history of making small, high quality production runs such as BMW’s X3, Aston Martin’s Rapide, Mercedes-Benz’s G-wagen, the MINI Crossover and Porsche’s Cayman and Boxster.
The danger with a quick transitions into production, of course, is the Concept 1 syndrome, or how Volkswagen’s gorgeous retro Beetle unveiled in Detroit in 1994 became a gormless, swollen pastiche of a production car.
Or Porsche’s compact and lovely 1993 Boxster concept, which morphed into the successful but scarcely trim eponymous sports car.
Rest assured. As far as I can see, the only changes made to the two-plus-two RCZ from concept to production is the deletion of the Bell & Ross clock in the centre of the dashboard and the exhaust pipe in the centre of the rear valance.
The latter is the result of using the whole floorpan from the 308, together with its MacPherson strut front, twist-beam rear suspension and, er, exhaust system.
Two levels of trim will be offered, Sport including fabric upholstery, 18-inch wheels, rear parking sensors, and all the safety features.
GT trim adds heated leather seats, carpet mats (Whoopdy Do!), 19-inch alloys and automatic wipers, lamps and dipping door mirrors, amongst other goodies.
The biggest goodie is the car, though. It’s gorgeous. The revised 308 front is strong enough on its own, but then there’s the “double bubble” roofline extending into an expensively double-curved glass rear window, all edged by strong aluminium-alloy roof arches.
These draw the eye from the clamshell bonnet over the cabin and down to the pert boot with the two-stage spoiler, which (police constables, please stop reading now) opens at 53mph and extends further at 96.
In the cabin, Peugeot has made considerable efforts to make its …………………………..