or -Two weeks in Provence
Every time we have hired with Europcar in France, we?ve been given a Clio. And it was the same this time. But different. For the first time we got the Mark III Clio. And for the first time we got a diesel (in silver, with rather more scrapes than one would expect for a car with 13,702 km on the clock.
Two interesting things about the pick-up. First, I was offered extra insurance to bring my excess down from 800 or so euros to 150. Normally, I don't accept these things, but for some reason I said yes. For a few hours afterward, I kept telling myself what an idiot I'd been, and just hoping that I didn't have reason to be glad of my decision. I didn't. Nor did I have reason to be glad of the Euroncap 5 star crash protection.
Second, when I started the ignition, the fuel gauge told me that it was about 7 eighths full. Over the next few days, I watched the needle slowly fall to about ¾ full. Then (on the morning of Friday 13th) it was reading full. As if that wasn't puzzling enough, the trip computer wasn't giving me any odometer reading at all, simply a message which said 'Pas de messages memorise' (or something like that.) I stopped a few miles down the road, and the odometer reading returned when I restarted - and it was fine until the day when we returned the car, when we got the error message again on starting in the morning. This time, at least the needle on the fuel gauge behaved itself, and gave us the same reading it had been giving the previous day. When we turned it in at Nice airport, we reported these two things to Europcar, and the gentleman on duty just laughed and said "It's a French car."
The car itself was pretty good in every way. It was roomy. Our large suitcase (60 cm) fitted flat in the boot (though only just!) One improvement over the Mk II Clio is that if we had needed to put the seats down to accommodate luggage, we could have done so. On the Mk II, in order to fold the back seats flat, one had to move the front seats so far forward that I found it quite a squeeze to get into the front, and would have found it physically difficult to drive the car. On the new car, I would have had plenty of room in the front. However, the resulting load area was not as flat as one would have wanted.
And it drove well. Ride was fair enough, and handling was very good. The engine was not exactly powerful (68 bhp, 0-60 in about 15 seconds), but it didn't feel underpowered to me. OK - the acceleration was not spectacular, and if I were getting a diesel Clio, I'd get the 86 bhp, but for my purposes, it had enough power. I guess the fact that the power comes lower down the rev range and the extra torque of the diesel engine makes up for the lack of total power. It certainly was OK driving on the autoroute at 130 kmph. It wasn't noisy at that speed either. Indeed, the car was very refined, except for the fact that the engine droned rather irritatingly at about 2000 rpm. This meant one tended to either slow down or speed up to avoid the noise.
The car was reasonably economical - we drove 752 miles and put 61.53 litres of diesel in the tank - which works out at 55.55 mpg. We actually topped the car up twice, and our brim to brim figure was 52.63 mpg which works out well short of the official combined figure of 61.4. It should be said, however, that the needle moved very slowly most of the time when I
was driving around at about 70 or 80 kmph - but when I was on the autoroute driving at an indicated 130, it moved so fast that I could almost see it drop. One good thing about the car is the 55 litre fuel tank, which meant that it had a range of over 600 miles - which is handy.
Overall impression? A fine car - but I was not left with that 'I want one' feeling. It just lacked that 'je ne sais quoi'.
Of course, part of the experience of being France is looking around to see what vehicles are on the road. I enjoy seeing all the 2CVs and Renault 4s. Saw one (yes, only one) Dacia Logan in a car park. In another car park saw a Lancia Thesis. Saw one or two Chrysler C300 taxis. Was quite surprised by how many Pluriels I saw. Most exciting moment was seeing a Citroen DS being driven along the main road by the med. Didn't, however, see a
single C6. :-(
Another interesting experience was looking at a couple of French car mags. Alas, my French isn't good enough to make much of them, but there was a test in L'auto Journal which pitted the new Corsa against its rivals. The comparisons was of diesels of about 85-90 bhp. I was interested to note that the results were as follows.
1) Peugeot 207
2) Renault Clio
3) Citroen C3
4) = Opel Corsa
4) = Toyota Yaris
6) Fiat Grand Punto.
So, that's first, second, and third, for the French. Patriotism / chauvinism? Or perhaps just a sign that the French manufacturers know exactly what the home market wants. One detail that caught my eye was that the Yaris war marked down heavily with regard to safety because ESP was not even available as an option.
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