Test drive Citroen Berlingo 2002 - 2008 Minivan

See and die

During the Paris trip was to test two vehicle: Citroen Berlingo and Peugeot Partner. The same as if the Klitschko brothers, they differ only in details, particularly motors. Diesel or petrol Pezh Citro? Vitali or Wladimir?


I went to the car sleepy. Somnambulistic gesture open the door, I throw back trunk. I rub my eyes. Mechanically stretched out his hand with a key, looking for some involving the transmission, turn, I start to move. Shakes. This tread beats of paving stones, dozens of times per second shaking hub, coils springs, shock absorber, a support strut, spar, seat frame, and finally all my vertebrae. And now, through the remnants of sleep, the brain attends a beautiful thought. Now six in the morning. I'm going through the deserted Champs-Elysees. This Paris.
 



On the topic of
This city gives much food for thought and memory. Only in Brighton but in Haifa, perhaps more Russian lives. Of those overseas, of course. Here in an airplane flying with rich suckers and serious Papic, hence our celebrities and buyers, stuffed with rags to boutiques. But Russian speech in Paris does not spoil. He simply does not notice. Arabs are still more. And more than just the Arab monuments. After Paris, Barcelona reminds overgrown Sochi, a favorite Petersburg gives feeble imitation. The ensemble of monuments forms a stable frame of reference by examining which going into the city without a map on the third day. The Eiffel Tower are guided parallel glancing at the Montparnasse skyscraper. In other words, for the life of the motorist and a person has all the conditions: there is no huge traffic jams, although the circumference of the ring road is only one. Nobody here takes an exemption for buses and taxi lane, although the street is quite narrow. And finally, here no one wants to have a special pass or flasher why be like a car with a nurse or firefighter crew? Directions Liberty, equality, fraternity.
 



French mechanization
In the process of the Parisian trip, two cars had to check: Citroen Berlingo and Peugeot Partner. The same, as if Klitschko's brothers, they differ only in detail, in particular motors. Diesel Tyro or Gasoline Pege? Vitaly or Vladimir? Two-liter Berlingo Multispace Modutop surprised from the very beginning. He won it in the underground parking, and everything around was shaking. The dynamics and character of the oscillations were not allowed to doubt the trunquer got a defective copy. But what, we, Russians, have never been driving on defective cars? Waited a little. The frozen HDI was a little bit warmed up and stopped trembled so much. I mentally promised him the battle hundred grams of the best Paris Soynalar and drove out of the dungeon. The sky over Burling was extremely clean. Before us lay a whole capital.
 



Recognize an unfamiliar city with the help of a car's pleasure of a special kind. It is also called the work, and in these words there is a share of truth together with the study of the tangled scheme of streets and drills you have to turn the steering wheel and shrust to the poker. The prohibitive signs and local police are given less attention than interesting perspectives, and periodic attempts to disclose their camera usually end with traffic jams on the staff. Since we abroad, creative itching is never interrupting disorderly beeps and juicy brands. Local see: a person for creative work and make the right conclusions. Silent and waiting. Frequently traveling travels by and smiling. Homeland, when will you become so? As in any European city, it is important here in time to switch to the correct program. There are fewer crazy, and no longer need to behave like them, defending their square meters. No one sticks with unique trading offers on traffic lights. No one will climb the glass with a dirty waffle towel for Eurogrosh. Everything is quiet. No one is late for anywhere. After a ten-year-old, you feel like a strait shirt. After a couple of days, the conversion crisis of the reincarnation of the shackles fell, and pulls to cosor into the flow, overtake and catch up as you used. So far, the priority of some former compatriot will not shake. And then everything falls into place. The correct program is activated.
 
Change of concepts and even more importantly, do not sway with the car. To make it clear to all that you are a height touring from the outskirts of Europe, it is enough just to get a red compartment. In the skin of Burlingo you feel invisible: no one pays attention to you, you are yours among their own. But if in Russia, with words, the driver of the heel before his eyes makes a sense row: fruit-vegetables, bags on the belt, bubble training and eternal thirst for profit, then in Europe the concepts must be changed.
 

Family, two offspring, a dog or explanations like: Father, you hear, rubit, and I take the more suitable reason to buy a similar car. And if you move away from conventions, it is worth recognizing that this car has an impressive sum of positive qualities, inaccessible cars of different classes. An excellent visibility times, three cubic meters of useful volume two, sliding doors on two sides of three, 5.0 liters of fishing expenditure outside the city, 7.3 in the city four, tuned to active ride chassis with non-insensitive torsions from behind five. The sixth number is the unique French ability to translate utilitarian in exceptional. On the high-speed winding road of Berlingo, there is any competitor at the expense of honing controllability. Modification Multispes will win due to the abundance of additional containers in the most original and convenient places. The modushop version will affect the imagination by the fact that through transparent compartments in the roof you can see airplanes on landing in Russia. Diesel Burlingo himself with a plane on the dynamics of overclocking, of course, do not compare, and in order to squeeze a decent acceleration from the engine, it is necessary to actively unwind the maximum of the ninety forces can only be obtained by 4,000 revolutions. But the car does not deceive expectations, and the most important aggressive driving style is little reflected on the fuel consumption.
 

And modern, but not too attractive exterior of the car allows him to fit into the landscape of any area with the same success. I taped Burlingo to the outskirts and at the center, forced to pose against the background of the skyscrapers of the defense and old Stores of St. Denis. It is organic and there. The car's inconsistency made it possible to put it in the most forbidden places, organizing congestion and risking fine. I cherished the battle and once, leaving lunch, threw it unlocked under the prohibition sign. Returning, he saw a police officer. Fortunately, he came to the soul of some Arab. They are still more than Russians.

About DT and AI transplanting from a diesel engine for gasoline for a while resembles a person in weightlessness like the same effort, but it turns out all two times easier. And even though I saked this idea even before sitting in Peugeot Partner, he still deceived me. White devices, comfortable destruil on the scene, support for the seats on a young man This combination usually produces an unambiguous impression. So I clicked on gas. A frisky partner at least less than 1.6 liters, but for the strength exactly twenty more. Hence the intake aggressiveness, because at the breaker of this vacuum cleaner, you already plan your urban slalom differently. It is symptomatic that it was the first to be the first to provoke the rudeness of the French taxi driver and answered her no less sharply. Burlingo, following the biblical tradition, would put the second cheek.


In a different way, you are planning a budget: almost ten liters of high-octane gasoline on a hundred in the city cycle much faster empty the owner's wallet. Without having modushop delights, the partner is simpler and utilitated, in its designs you begin to notice the minor advantages, like mounting nets in the luggage compartment, huge mirrors, the inner strap to close the massive fifth door, convenient adjustment of the steering column. And otherwise all the deadly is equally. Well, convenient, but already boring all the same, the production of two cars under different names The French should have left the Americans, whom they do not like it, but the hiking crowds wander around Paris in search of simple entertainment. But the tourist, the dismissed city from the car seems completely different. You are outside the industry, you do not make money on you. You have time and sometimes you drive to places available only by Old-timers. Envy standing only by motorcyclists they have no parking problems. But Paris in motion of attractive static. Just like any beautiful car.
 

After even the days after your airbus runs along the upbatch and take the course to Moscow, it still seems to remember each Shcherbin on a paving, each pigeon who bothered from under the wheels, every couple in love with these eternal bridges. Because it is Paris. For the first time, having visited it, it is impossible to forget. But there is a month and images are erased, only names remain: Puisssea Ruissi, Pont Netz, Sacre-Ker passes half a year and the memory helpfully brings only pictures from the railway web of the Eiffel, the paintings of the Louvre, the grudge of the Triumphal Arch. You have already forgotten almost everything. Crap.
 


Thank you for help in organizing test Russian representative offices Peugeot and Citroen
 

Text: Alexander EuroTowin
Photo: Author
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A source: Magazine "Wheels" [№81 / 2004]