So we had our honeymoon in France. It was a really good time. Flew into Paris, directly onto a train and to Avignon in Provence. Had a Renault Clio 1.5 CDI rental car. I won't go too much into the trip here, but the car really impressed me.
1.5 liter, common fuel rail diesel engine, really close ratio gear box, light weight chassis and decent braking. Four corner discs, 260 front, 240 mm rear. Didn't check calipers but probably nothing impressive. It didn't matter with the low weight. The engine was stupid torquey, but no horsepower. Power was pretty much dead around 4000, but the close ratio made it quick to sprint to 100 or 120 km/hr, but was in fifth gear and losing accelerating ability about then. Fuel economy is reported to be around 60 miles per gallon, but I didn't track it with my driving style. I can tell you that gas is fucking stupid. Luckily we only burnt through a quarter of a tank, but that still cost us 20 Euro to refill ($28 US with weak dollar). The rental car company said it cost 108 Euro to fill the tank! Needless, not many big cars around France. Lots of wee cars. Lauren got a big lesson in chassis that WRC cars have been based off of, as well as F2000 and Super 1600 cars. We saw them all. Peugot 206, 307, Fiat Punto, Suzuki Swift, Renault Clio, Megane, Ford Focus, Fiesta, etc. The new Ford's don't look nearly as good in stock form as the WRC version. Same could be said about the latest Fiesta, though I saw one trim level that looked much better. Anyhow, move on to the driving.
We did a few days of driving out in the coutryside and I made sure we took a route that would take us over a little mountain pass and a super tight and twisty tarmac road. Holy shit, those roads are tarmac rally dreams. We left the Abbey de Senaque, which was a the bottom of this canyon and surrounded by lavender fields. We have a 20 km drive ahead of us that I planned that took us up a little hill, down to a valley, then we turned and drove up a little mountain, over a pass, then back down. It was all tight, twisty tarmac. So after about the first three clicks this Renault is suddenly on my ass and passes me. So, naturally I keep up with him. He's got a buddy in a Swift right behind me. The speed they were driving these roads was nuts. In my stock Renault I pretty much needed to take rally type lines and there was occasional oncoming traffic. After about 2 km I pulled off and let the other guy pass and let them have their fun. I didn't feel comfortable with a rental car and new wife to drive as quickly as they were around blind corners on roads that were barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Anyhow, we continued on at a brisk pace and did manage to scare a few tourists and passed quite a few cars by the time we got to town. I never had any desire to do tarmac rallies, but now that I have driven a real tarmac rally road I can't wait to do one. Not in the US though. Probably Rally Guadalajara is the most realistic. As we got to the end there was a house with a garage and a few guys that looked around my age (25-35 range) and a historic Citroen rally car. We passed it and I stopped and wanted to back up to go talk to them, but there was a big truck full of logs barrelling down on me and we were both getting hungry so we kept going. As we were leaving town I bought a French rally mag. I'll try to scan some stuff in from it, but on the calendar there were like 9 rallies. For the month of July! The weekend of the 7th and 8th had 5 different regional events on it alone.
I'd located Col de Turini on our map and had we had another day down in Provence we were going to go to Monte Carlo and drive that famous stage road. We settled for the much closer Col de Mur which ended up being fun. Maybe next time though.
Here's some Google Earth placemarkers for any interested.
http://www.nocoastmotorsports.net/GoogleEarth/Col%20de%20Mur.kmz
Also for Rally Idaho, which you can see how stupidly fast that rally is. Jimmy Bolin averaged over 100 MPH on a 4.4 mile long stage at Idaho. Not really a good comparison or fair comparison. Wonder if anyone has Google Earth for any East Coast tarmac rallies. Is it Tennessee that's tarmac? I can't recall.
http://www.nocoastmotorsports.net/GoogleEarth/Idaho%20Rally.kmz
Grant Hughes
