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Peugeot 107 Sport XS - devilment in moderation
LOOK at its little face – all cheeky and smily looking like butter wouldn't melt in its, erm, grille.
I think that smiling front air scoop is what Tony Blair has been modelling his pearly white grimace on for the past decade or so and it has worked for him.
And in the Sport XS guise, Peugeot's fun-sized citycar has been blessed with a smattering of racy nuances designed to make it stand out from the crowd.
Unless that crowd consists of the Toyota Aygo and Citroen C1 because
all three cars are, to all intents and purposes, identical.
Made in the same factory in the Czech Republic the cars are a joint
project and differ from one another only very slightly.
In the case of the 107 Sport XS featured here, there have been certain
tweaks bestowed upon the model to enable it to hail the funky teenage
market.
Uber low insurance and fuel costs make it an almost irresistible first time buy in the car market.
And while petrol heads will scoff in disdain at the 1.0-litre engine, they'd do well to remember the car weighs the same as a cigarette paper.
That allows the three-cylinder unit to churn out a combined fuel figure of over 60mpg and while its 0-60mph time of 14 seconds is unlikely to
blister any asphalt, the powerplant is certainly plucky and willing enough to cough up a top speed of exaclty 100mph.
The Sport XS also comes with go-faster stripes, a twin exhaust outlet
and alloy wheels which all add to what Peugeot calls 'street style'.
It's not go-faster in the sense of turbo-charged adrenaline junky, it's
go faster in the same way as turning your cap back-to-front when you're
racing your sister to the ice-cream van. It's cute.
What's not so cute though is the price you have to pay to get the extras
included in the Sport XS package.
An on-the-road price of 8,352 punts the little scamp into the kind of
territory where bigger boys are likely to come along and steal its girlfriend and leave it winded in a layby – with no dinner money.
OK so you get a rev-counter, air conditioning, a CD-player - with the
now ubiquitous MP-3 auxiliary , a leather-trimmed steering wheel, a four-star Euro Ncap crash test rating, ABS - the list goes on.
But all that cash for such a small car? It must have something up its
sleeve.
Well, there's its can-go-anywhere attitude to city life which means it can be parked on a sixpence.
And there's the added bonus of being able to make your getaway by driving through the traffic warden's legs if the nasty man tries to give you a parking ticket.
One thing I did expect though was a taught and firm ride from the 107.
Some corners of the motoring trade have even described it as choppy but I felt it was comfortable.
Only when it was being treated like the hot-hatch it is pretending to be
did the handling misbehave feeling too sloppy for some of the rough
stuff.
And that's half the problem.Peugeot have billed it as a car full of
devilment and just isn't.
It has the horns of the Devil – but there are corks on the end.
Its bark is worse than its bite – if it even has a bite. It's loving
attitude to life means that if for any reason it should take a dislike to you, you're more likely to be gummed to death than lose a chunk of flesh.
In some ways it reminded me of the Lovebug that was Herbie in the way
Peugeot has crafted their carriage.
In fact, I think that if a hedgehog were to scurry out in front of the 107 it would bunny-hop over the top of the little fella.
This car is not one for the motoring purist, it's one for the driver who likes a bit of fun and doesn't take life too seriously – after all, you're only here once.
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Weather for Worksop
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
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Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
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