Slightly different kind of rental/loaner/driving experience. Due to current situation and associated extra measurements for traveling while not fully vaccinated with it, I left my decision to join Ringmeet very late. Like, a week before the roadtrip started late. But I was keeping an eye on flight prices, just as costly Finnish antigen test prices, rental options etc. Around the same time
@thomas started the donation program, to help Ahr valley flood victims with some cars. This suited my needs, as the premium for anything even remotely interesting from a rental company is rather costly and I was toying with the idea of buying something cheap for the roadtrip, even if it would be very impractical for just few days. This was better use for my money than financing global rental companies.
Anyway, once I decided I'll join Ringmeet, we agreed with Thomas I'll pay for plates and insurance for one of the donor cars and drive it to Ringmeet / flood area, to be given away for someone who needs it. I originally wanted to take the boy-racer Astra, with badly tinted windows, fart can and a lowering kit. But due to the tight schedule it couldn't be made roadworthy in time. Fortunately, an Peugeot was ready to go. Sort of.
As soon as Thomas picked me up from the train station the sound of the exhaust worried me. Also, as we quickly found out, it was running rather low on oil (and intact dipsticks). 3.3l oil capacity and adding a litre only brought the level up to just above minimum. But the oil in the engine was still fresh and clean, so I wonder what had happened. And after quickly patching up the exhaust I set of for the delivery drive, slightly detouring through the Black forest.
Plenty of forewords, so what did I end up with, then. After the Astra was out I got another very basic transport from the 90s, a 3 door Peugeot 106, with 60hp from a 1.1 powerhouse. I got to choose between this or a 1.6 Laguna II estate and decided smaller, lighter car would be preferable.
Also light on equipment, as one would expect. Manual sunroof, electric windows and a radio missing the security code was pretty much it. Very lightly equipped on the tyre front as well, with worn 155 wide some season tyres. But apart from those tyres and quite BMW-esque rip on the driver seat side bolster, it was in good condition overall. Very little rust, very few cracks or creaks in the interior. What wasn't too light was the non-assisted steering. Wasn't much of a bother, but something you had to be aware of in tighter turns, especially as the seats don't offer too much support and I had to sit further back than I'd prefer.
The seat was set surprisingly high, even for me and wasn't adjustable. The whole setup felt quite close to ISA spec, but wasn't as bad. But I had to make a compromise with how I'd want the position set and how badly my leg hits the centre console. Cushioning was very soft and reminded me of some Renault seats and was surprisingly supportive (or easy to hang in), despite being very flat. Pedals and shifter very typically French from my experience, i.e. horrible. That was somewhat irritating, as you need to shuffle the gears a lot with that amount of power and some hills in the way. Instead of heel'n'toe I resorted to head toe braking when some throttle was needed, to reach both pedals. Clutch cable seemed to be sticking a bit, so smooth takeoffs needed some getting used to. Otherwise the surprisingly long pedal travel was fine. Gearbox felt the same as any manual Peugeot I've driven, the lever is too far forward and too low. Finding correct gears is still easy, but I hate the feel of the whole thing.
Those bad tyres made it good fun to drive though. The grip limit was reached way before speed limits and there was no need to cause excessive stress to brakes when driving more dynamically. After all, this car was to be donated, so I didn't want to stress it too much. The very mildly boosted brake feel was very much to my liking though. The visibilty was magnificient, like you'd expect and almost everything else felt like a pillar box when switching cars. To conform to the French stereotype it was rather comfortable to drive on bumpier roads. I thought it was quite bouncy at first, then I tried the 309 GTI on similar roads. And then the Fiesta ST... I sort of got used to the comfort wobble, something I also associate with any French car, even if I would prefer the more direct feel Japanese and some Germans at least usually offer. And while out of these 3 mentioned cars the Fiesta suited me best from what I'd want from a drivng experience, I probably had most fun in the 106, due to performance limits being so low. And of course it had the Peugeot gearing of 1-2-3-3.5-4, so it was screaming all the time and 130kph felt like the maximum speed you'd want to do. Fortunately no rev gauge though, so it could be left in the background to do its thing.
Size advantage. We were wondering if there's anything on the Porsche you could option at the price of the Peugeot.
That color works well in the sun
Overall it did well and even our quick fix exhaust held on, fortunately, as new parts didn't make it in time even for Ringmeet. My estimate of the consumption was around 7.2-7.5 l/100km, despite either going flat out or downhill, no other options. I would've wanted to do a ringlap with it, but that exhaust was too big a risk for it. Overall, not a class of cars I'm terribly interested in and would probably pick almost anything Japanese over the 106 if I had the choice. But it did everything that was asked for it and will hopefully continue do the same with its new owner. And of course the related video, to remind why this car came along in the first place.