Peugeot’s 20Cup concept

Peugeot’s 20Cup concept shares little more than its engine and the front-end styling with the production car, and certainly not the design of its rear, which looks, from the front three-quarter at least, like it’s been involved in a dreadful accident. And, thanks to an over-enthusiastic French journalist, one of the pair of 20Cups that Peugeot built already has been.


The other, pictured here, retains the motorcycle-style rear swingarm with single rear wheel that Peugeot intended. Sadly, that rear wheel isn’t the driven one; 20Cup is a front-driver like the production model, although considerably lighter: constructed mostly from carbon fibre, it weighs a shade under 500kg. Around eighty percent of its weight is over the front wheels, so gets only a diddy disc to brake the huge rear wheel, shod with an intermediate tyre from a Le Mans prototype racer. There are more racecar features further forward.



The cabin’s spartan, with moulded carbon for seats, four-point harnesses, plumbed-in fire extinguisher and a six-speed sequential gearbox – as concept cars go, this is a very drivable one. But that’s something Peugeot is adept at: the RC coupes spawned a race series and a 120mph spin in the V12-powered 907 nearly caused the demise of our own, passengering, Andrew Frankel. Fortunately, there’ll be no ton-up experiences today.


For one, we’re at the Mortefontaine test facility west of Paris – the French MIRA or Millbrook, if you like – where space is a little tight for 100mph speeds. And secondly, it’s throwing it down with rain so hard that I can barely see through my helmet visor, water’s sloshing about the cabin so that my legs are wetter than Coldplay and I can barely see over the vestigial wind-deflector. Nevertheless, I find that the 20Cup’s 1.6-litre, 168bhp turbocharged engine is, in this application at least, a potent one. It develops most of its 177lb ft from low down in the rev-range and throws the 20Cup along at a fierce rate. It’s keen to rev and feels smooth throughout the rev-band, although judging its aural quality is rather difficult because of its bellowing exhaust.


 The race ‘box and clutch shunt badly at low speeds, too, but it feels like a promising powerplant. Which, given it will power not only the 207 GTi, but several other Peugeots, Citroens and the next-generation Mini Cooper, it had better be.