This week’s car, writes Tom Mooney, is the espresso of the road. Let me explain.
Can you remember a time when a cup of coffee in a cafe came with a spoon and a saucer, if you were lucky.
No add ons. No appendages. No skinny latte. No mocha. No macchiato buried between flashing BlackBerrys.
No one shots, two shots. No regular, medium or large. Never an irregular.
Just a mug of plain, dark coffee waiting for a tear drop of milk to explode. In other words, instant coffee.
In Italy you get served coffee twice as fast there as you do here, because you are not met with a barrage of questions.
Is it so long ago that you could buy a coffee in a plastic cup that was speedy, tasty and sharp?
Speedy, tasty and sharp – now there’s a consideration
Just like this week’s car, the Peugeot RCZ, the best looking I have driven this year. And throw in last year as well.
It is speedy to drive, tasty inside and sharp to look at.
A rough translation of espresso connects ‘expression’ with ‘quickly’, and the RCZ delivers on its potential beneath the bonnet very, very quickly.
Whether it’s a coupe or a sports car depends on the type of driver you are: it has seats in the rear, but I only used them for the shopping, so I treated the RCZ like a proper sports car that is both comfortable at speed and exudes formidable traction.
From the outside it has echoes of the Audi TT, but the aesthetic difference is that the RCZ is not remotely feminine. It looks like a TT for a few seconds, but circumnavigate the car and peruse the double bubble roof, and you know that you are in the presence of a car that is bolder in every department. Even the double tailgate smacks of intent.
Driving it, I felt Ireland isn’t long enough or wide enough to really enjoy it. In an ideal world you would take the ferry to Cherbourg, fill it up and drive non stop across France and Italy to Verona, and then turn around.
The RCZ is more than a pleasure to drive, it’s intoxicating. You are always itching for an excuse to take it for a spin. Peugeot was clever to accentuate the importance of the car’s aerodynamics by making the obvious link between the fluid roof and the aluminum arches.
At rest, it looks like an athlete about to bolt.
The cabin is swathe in black leather, but the instrumental panel is deftly arranged so that it doesn’t distract. The attention to detail, however minute, is exemplary. The chrome inserts on the steering wheel are echoed in the dials, of which there is an enormous speedometer and rev counter, while a large clock is suspended over the central sound system. Silver resonates throughout, subtly disarming the swaddling black, and adds profile to the door handles, the gear lever knob and the foot pedals.
It is here, totally ensconced, that the RCZ’s sports credentials are evident: Peugeot has opted for a compromise between the aesthetics of the 1960’s and the execution of modern design.
If you have ever been behind the wheel of a Lotus Elan or a Jaguar E Type, you can literally feel, whether its the Nappa leather finish with double overstitching of the seats, or the thickness of the exquisite full grain leather of the steering wheel, the artistry invested in the RCZ’s design. It’s Jean Paul Gaultier with a scalpel.
Anybody with even a remote understanding of the meaning of tactile will get the RCZ from the off. No expense has been spared in reminding you that the RCZ experience, at the very least, is the quintessence of opulence.
However, that is just the style. The substance begins with the chorus of the engine, and boy do you hope that that initial eruption justifies the huge expense of the leather which dances from armrest to armrest. The RCZ offers a wide range of engines, and if MPG is a consideration, go for the diesel, which doesn’t hang about in any case but is easy on the pocket.
If you are used to driving a sports car or a low coupe, the driving position won’t surprise you, although there is much more leg and head room in the RCZ than, say, a Porsche Boxster, with which its hold the upper hand in road holding. No oversteer to mention.
If new to this form of driving, you might find the suspension on the stiff side, but this will wear off and, ironically for a versatile and comfortable car, your best driving position will materialse as you put some miles behind you.
But what I wanted from the RCZ, and what I got, was not alone an adrenalin rush, but an absolute confidence in its road handling. With any coupe or sports car, you need a balanced weighting of the steering, and if you get this right, everything like control and body roll follows.
At the outset you might find that the driving position is low, but Peugeot has allowed the steering wheel to be extremely maneuverable. You will also notice an innocuous button by the handbrake: this allows you to raise or lower the rear spoiler, but you would have to have the sensitivity of a Braille reader to spot the difference.
You either get a spontaneous liking for a car like the RCZ or you don’t, and if the latter you won’t remotely understand why, above all, throttle to the floor, I adored its spontaneity and its offshoot, a generously endowed refinement, beginning with the gear changes and finishing with the delightful vocal of the engine which wouldn’t be out of place at Wexford Opera House. But more Pavorotti than Witches of Eastwick.