PEUGEOT 607 test drive since 2005 sedan

Haute couture

Real French design! While we followed the truck, on the platform of which the 607th swayed decorously, the conversation was about the French body couturier, whose star quickly rose in the 30s and quickly rolled after the French government adopted a tax law that made an unprofitable purchase of cars with large -liter engines. The Russian topic arose: the well -known decision of the State Duma about 2.5 liters was remembered - this populist bone, thrown by deputies to the people. And they came to the obvious conclusion: Russia is not France, as they bought expensive cars from us, they will buy it. True, Peugeot 607 is still a wonders in our market.
 
The design is made on a scale, even with chic. Like an artist, without tearing his hands away, held a line that outlined the contours of the hood, roof, trunk. Moreover, he spent a brush, not a pencil or coal - the line is distinguished by special smoothness. And we have the right to demand the author. The name of the artist is Silvein Potier.
 
The development of the 607th (project Z8) began in February 1995 at the Style Corporate Center, located in the Paris suburb, La Garenn-Kol. From 1994 to 1998, the center was headed by Murat Gunak, an sent Cossack from Mercedes-Benz, who returned there later. For him, the French business trip was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his abilities to the German authorities. For Peugeot, the same is a chance to change the prevailing state of things: even the most surely cars from Sosho are rarely compared with Mercedes.
 
As a result, the 607th was enriched with numerous chrome details, earlier PEUGEOT unusual. Fulfillment lines are registered, like Mercedes. They were elegantly called Diamant (diamond), ebene (black tree), Ivoire (ivory) and Titane (titanium). Our machine in the Ivoire configuration was combined by a black obsidian color body with interior land in Kassel. Other colors are indicated just as exotic - Blue Samarkand, for example.
 
By the way, the Mercedes-Benz company, although it experiments with the design of individual elements, for example, headlights or rear lights, would never allow itself to be liberties with the body as a whole. In this sense, Peugeot is less dogmatic - the trunk lid got a concave shape! (Another elegant solution is that the trunk is unlocked by pressing the Noler in the nalle of 607.) At the first sketches, the hood was concave, but the engines defended their territory.
 
So we arrived. We start acquaintance. Arabian flavor of the skin against the backdrop of Moscow slush (this additional pleasure costs about $ 2000), a multi -position tuning of a driver's seat (height, pillow, back, headrest tilt), but ... a strange feeling - something similar should experience a pen placed in the case: it seems And not crowded, but not turn. The interior clearly sought to give the same scope as the body. Here the front panel line flowed from the rack to the rack. But the stand itself presses on the temple so that you want to reject my head. A wide console substitutes the back: on it - separate climate control for the right and left seats, and a liquid crystal monitor, and a lot of neat useful buttons. But there is a desire to move away, to squeeze. And a black hole, in the depths of which you need to find control pedals?
 
It is clear that there is a category of Driver's Car, like BMW, in them the layout of the workplace is tight -fitting, adjusting to the high -speed conquest of space. But Peugeot 607 is not such a car! This is a car of a successful bourgeois, which even in close Paris has a personal parking, where an almost five-meter handsome-Peugeot fits without zigzag twitching. And even getting out on the freeway, the owner considers to drive in full speed below his dignity.
 
The 607th interior developers were unlikely to create a sports cockpit. It is obvious that the console that is tightly dictated by the size of the climatic installation, which should quickly heat or cool large volumes of air. But in the end, only the illusion of space was obtained.
 
The above can be attributed to the subjectivity of the perception of the authors (the thing is inevitable if the car is not hung with sensors), but there are also objective miscalculations. For example, a recess in the armrest, for which you should cling to close the door, is located close to the driver, so you have to unnaturally wring your hand. Or imitation of wood in the decoration ...
 
Probably, the creators of the 607th silhouette prefer riding in the driver's seat, otherwise they would have followed the new fashion with less zeal to give great sedans the outlines of the compartment. Compare the results of branded measurements: we are honestly warned that the height of the ceiling above the front seat is 976-1027 mm (51 mm - the vertical tuning of the pillow), and only 912 mm above the rear. There is a alarming difference of 64 millimeters. Note that in the 605th these values \u200b\u200bwere 991 and 950 mm, respectively. You can also contact such an opponent 607th as the five of the BMW. This company is not yet suspected of new fashion: the distance from the rear seat pillow to the ceiling is about 950 mm.
 
It seems problematic to move anything: the back of the chassis is so tightly composed, the subframe, the exhaust pipe, the boast of the gas tank, the levers and the springs ... I can’t even believe that the chassis was designed more than ten years ago-for the 605th. .
 
By the way, the developers call the front suspension of the car pseudo-mak-farson. We tried for a long time to understand what this mysterious pseudo means, but we did not have enough wisdom that, apparently, the Peugeot engineers were gaining during exhausting tests in the Arabian desert and in the east - they have long weakness in the company. Perhaps the case is also the eternal terms of the French to the immigrants from the other side of the La Channel, to which Mr. Macpherson also belongs to. The only difference between the pseudo and the classic Macpherson suspension that we managed to detect is that the stabilizer shoulders are fixed not on the levers, but directly on the racks (using a ball joint), which allows him to respond faster to the suspension.
 
If the development of suspensions is called the PEUGEOT branded dish, then the Mercedes -Benz is considered to be a shooter in the field of introducing various electronic systems - ABS, a stabilizing complex, on -board controller, multiplex wiring. However, we recall that the data transfer tires were tested at Citroen XM, from where they migrated to the prototypes of the future 607th, hiding under the larva of the PEUGEOT 605.
 
In the Intelligent Service Box BSI, the 607th can be sewn up to 24 microchips responsible for the functioning and interaction of systems through a multiplex data transfer bus that replaced colored kilometers of wires.
 
There is an opinion: features of a national character are reflected in everything that is made by the relevant people. If so, it is easy to assume that fantastic films of the era of the scientific and technical revolution left an indelible mark in the souls of the French. A bunch of levers and buttons, on which it is proposed to press the driver of the 607th, pushes a bunch of levers and buttons. The neighbors, the same Germans, have already played enough of spaceships. The highway is not space. BMW engineers, for example, at the Z9 concept frame made control of all secondary functions to the only tooth-shaped joystick located to the right of the seat. It seems that Peugeot believes that in order to feel like a conqueror of space, it is necessary to press something, reprogram, turn on different additional functions. As many as four steering wheel switches! In addition - from cheap hard plastic: contrast with leather magnificence of the salon is striking.
 
Let's deal with them. The left upper controls the main light, turns indicators and fog. In the end part of this lever there is a button, when pressed by the headlights will independently turn on when entering the tunnel (garage) or at dusk (in the Peugeot -605 there was a sound signal button at this place - now it is transferred to the core of the steering wheel). In addition, when external light changes, the brightness of the lighting of the devices will change. Light (and wipers) are automatically turned on at the command of the rain sensor. Left lower lever - cruise control.
 
Now - the right side of the steering column. Here the upper switch is responsible for the operation of windshield wipers and headlights. With his help, you can communicate with the flight comprehensive compliance. And Nizhny controls the radio.
 
The driver's seat setting algorithm is not as clear as the famous Mercedes-Benz chair. Only two keys that move in different directions. Pushing the first back and forth, you can move the chair along the slide; To change the height of the pillow, you need to pull it down or up. The second key leads the back of the back and the height of the headrest. The seat settings can be entered in memory.
 
It is necessary to adjust the slope and departure of the steering wheel manually, without the help of servo drives. A chubby small steering wheel with moderate feedback fits comfortably in his hands. The steering mechanism is equipped with an amplifier, the pump of which with an increase in the speed of the crankshaft pumps through the hydraulic system a smaller amount of liquid. And the force on the steering wheel increases. This system in Peugeot is called DAV. By the way, on the most expensive version of the car, the amplifier has a different principle - filling the steering wheel depends only on the speed of the machine.
 
Acceleration of the car fascinated us. Showing at first a slight thoughtfulness, Peugeot then gives a powerful and at the same time smooth acceleration. This is the result of the high elasticity of the engine and typically French long gears. The authors have quite long hands to control the lever of a 5-speed checkpoint, but by the nature of the car it would be more logical to see in its place an automatic transmission ZF-Porsche. Alas, this pleasure (affordable, by the way, and Audi customers) is provided only on the most expensive versions of the 607th.
 
The electronic gas pedal by the pressing reaction resembles a regular mechanical connection with the throttle. The manner of gaining speed, and even in combination with excellent sound insulation, is boring: you can roll enough on the second, in the same way - on the third and then on the fourth, observing how the tachometer arrow lazily crawls into a vertical position. The degree greatness of this mechanism is a wonderful feature for urban checkpoint.
 
Cracks in the asphalt, tram rails, handling of hatches - we do not notice all this. The car has a soft energy-intensive suspension, because of which many copies were broken a year ago. Having crammed the machine with electronics, the engineers could not coordinate the operation of the stabilizing system with the elastokinematic characteristics of the chassis. This led to the breakdowns of the car into an unplanned skid when passing high -speed turns. It is with the correction of the capricious manner of the Peugeot 607 that delays in the supply of it are associated not only to Russia, but also to European countries. Other silent blocks, control microchips, stabilizers with changed characteristics, tires with a tread of 225 wide a width instead of 215 millimeters ... Now that the driver is too sword in the turn, the stabilizing system strangles the engine and straightens the trajectory with barely noticeable clicks in the brake mechanism.
 
When passing the turns, another problem, far from controllability, arose. The wide, stands, extended forward - a tribute to aerodynamics and passive safety - form dead areas, behind which a pedestrian or a small car is not always visible.
 
In comparison with the 605th, the suspension softness increases with a light vertical swaying of the body on wavy suburban roads. However, it is equipped with an AMVAR nine -level compression system. If the sensor in front notes the development of unevenness, then the electronics gives the rear suspension the command to properly meet the approaching obstacle. Nine levels instead of two on the 605th is an obvious step forward. But, as before, a smart device is available only on the most expensive versions with six -cylinder engines. This system also allows you to eliminate the clover effect during braking.
 
The 607th slows down than A6 or E-class. Some of the competitors would not hurt to search for its brake system with a very informative, clearly dosing force by the pedal. ABS comes to life only when a chilling comes to mind: everything will now carry. Just in case, the AFU subsurient system is provided, with which the alarm is automatically turned on. By the way, it turns on in any case - if the brake pedal moves at a speed of 7 m/s.
 
Correct car, Peugeot 607. It can be stunned by the grace of lines, a wealth of decoration and equipment - and immediately sobered with wrinkled sutures of leather upholstery in some places, plastic switches and a kind of manner of turning ...
 
And yet to have such a car is tempting.
 
Text: Denis Orlov, Alexander Pikulenko
 
 

A source: Motor magazine [No. 1/2001]