Peugeot’s focus has always been the urban cars, of many kinds. They made some luxury sedans, some faster coupes, some vans and even pick-up trucks, but the special dedication goes to hatchbacks, sedans and station wagons. It’s a very wide range, but their difference from the other brands is made at the design, always guided by this feline touch who comes from their lion logo. Considering that, when they came up with the first RCZ, a few years ago, everyone thought they would follow Audi’s path with R8 and dive at the supersports cars’s world for the first time. The thing is, there was another use to this coupe at the French brand’s mind. RCZ doesn’t try to break speed records or spoil its occupants like a limousine, but bring its brand back to its roots. This car shares platform with the 308 line but doesn’t try to deny it – they even have the same central console – because it wishes precisely to be a connection, joining the urban cars with the typical Peugeot’s style boldness. So they gave it a killer style (without saving with shared parts here, thank God) and excellent engines to match it, but still not exclusive for it. Besides that, all this scale production saving helped them to accomplish the last but equally important goal, which will be revealed later.
Although the sales started at 2010, its very first appearance was made as a concept car at 2007, which explains that this face-lift is already planned to 2013. It’s easy to see that they did only what is expected from a half-age update: an improvement of the original concept, instead of desperate attempts to hide the car’s age which easily results at a total lack of harmony. The rear has received nothing more than a new arrangement at the tail lights, but the front deserves applause. Peugeot has avoided the crime it would be to mess this style, so they changed only the necessary to adapt it to their current visual identity. And what an amazing surprise it is to see RCZ abandoning those exaggeratedly-bulged headlights in favor of still feline-inspired but much more elegant units, with reduced size. The air intakes are now clearly divided into two parts, with the upper one reminding of 508 while the lower one now rounds it and ends at two sharp points who carry the LED daylights. A very interesting change is the addition of lots of personalization options. For instance, it’s now possible to change the carbon fiber roof and the front air intake’s coating, to paint the roof’s arches and brake calipers in different colors and even choose between ten wheel options.
