It’s a rare thing for public relations managers to perform extreme tests on their company’s products, but that was the inadvertent fate of a senior PR from Peugeot back in 2010.
Out very early to recce a test route before his press guests arrived, he and a colleague took an RCZ into the foothills of the Pyrenees, in north-east Spain, to check that there were no new hazards. Sometimes roadworks can suddenly appear, instantly undermining the pre-planned route.
Our man was indeed undermined, not by a fresh-dug hole in the road but by ice – the RCZ catching a sheet that sent it skating straight off the road. It was a mountain curve with a pretty steep drop-off, and the Peugeot crashed a long way down a hillside and deep into some trees. It must have been terrifying.
Neither he nor his colleague was seriously hurt, but they were badly shaken, and there was a steep climb to get back to the road. And, the pair gradually realised, they were invisible to passing vehicles being well below the level of the road, and in the middle of nowhere.
But help was to be found in the roof console of the RCZ, this the first Peugeot to have an SOS button that could contact the emergency services and pinpoint its location. Rescue was not long coming, although the PRs were told to take time off before returning to duty. The incident must have taken the shine off launching one of Peugeot’s most exciting models for years, even if the RCZ had done a great job of protecting its occupants during – and after – the crash.
The RCZ was exciting not only for the way it looked, but also because Peugeot had never intended to make it in the first place – this sexy, Audi TT-like coupé originally a concept car and nothing more.
The ‘nothing more’ is often the trouble with concept cars, in that they usually generate a wave of lust that’s very likely to be unrequited. Though not before said desires are further fired by the concept’s creators’ talk of mulling over the possibilities for production. Which is usually followed by no production at all. Or if manufacturing does ensue, the showroom model is not quite the car that we saw in the first place.
But there are exceptions, some entirely planned like the Honda E and Jaguar I-Pace concepts, and a few that were never intended for production, their makers saying as much at the outset, only for a factory to be tooled up to produce the gem in question.
And that was the story with the Peugeot RCZ. Or the 308 RCZ, as it was labelled when revealed as a concept at the Frankfurt show in 2007. Back then it was merely an exploration, a hint that Peugeot was thinking about rekindling the more dynamic, sporting reputation that it once had. Reaction to the compact front-drive coupé was so enthusiastic, however, that Peugeot changed its mind and went ahead with it after all, the production version unveiled at the same show two years later, before going on sale in April 2010.