A year ago the racy-looking Peugeot RCZ R Concept premiered in Paris and it served to light the way forward for the looks of the updated Peugeot Coupe. We’re now happy to report that rather than it being a cynical Concept car exercise, Peugeot are insisting it will become a production reality and that the raciest RCZ ever will make a Goodwood Festival of Speed debut next month.
The world launch will happen before year end and we will get to see the Peugeot RCZ R at the 2013 Johannesburg International Motor Show (JIMS) in October.
The attractive coupe will still make do with the same 1.6-litre THP engine, except now it’s been pumped up to 192 kW of surging turbo power. That makes the Peugeot RCZ R quite simply the most powerful road-going Peugeot ever. Quite astonishingly, that means the RCZ R has a specific engine output of over 118 kW per litre, a figure not far off that of the Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG’s 132 kW per litre.
Fuel consumption of 6.9 L/100km and CO2 emissions of 155 g/km are being targeted. Harnessing all that power to the ground is a highly tweaked suspension set-up with a Torsen limited-slip differential and bigger wheels and tyres of course.
These figures are not detailed performance specifications as yet but the 46 kW gain will be pretty substantial over the standard Peugeot RCZ’s output and the biggest challenge for Peugeot will be taking advantage of all that power despite the natural limitations of front-wheel drive. Either way, we cannot wait for JIMS 2013 now. Bring on the RCZ R.
