NEXT MONTH / DAILY-DRIVER

For three generations, my family was involved in the car industry in New Zealand through their ownership of Campbell Motors, which held the New Zealand franchises for Peugeot, Renault, American Motors (Rambler and Jeep), Hino, Daihatsu, and Toyota. Because of that, I was brought up on a diet of cool, mostly French cars and learned to appreciate them. When it came time for me to own my own cars, I naturally didn’t stray too far from the Campbell Motors franchises.

My daily driver is a 1995 Peugeot 106 Rallye that I bought in 2007. It is, in effect, a road-registered race car. Peugeot New Zealand brought in 30 of these cars, which they renamed ‘Clubsport’ (maybe the word Rallye wasn’t cool enough?), to be used in a national one-make race series over three years from 1994 to 1996. They came with an Fia-homologated roll cage, race wheels, adjustable front struts and Peugeotsport shock absorbers. About 22 of these cars were raced, two were rallied, and six were kept as spares. The race series was very lively, very close, and very strictly controlled. Following the end of the series, many of the cars that hadn’t been destroyed went into touring car racing or were reconfigured for tarmac rallying.

My car was one of the spares that was never caged and never raced. It runs, as standard, a very trick alloy block with steel liners giving 1294cc with a single overhead cam, two valves per cylinder putting out about 110bhp at 7800 revs and weighing 850kg. Just because, I also own one of the former race series cars. It is one of the most engaging cars I have ever driven, and I hugely enjoy every kilometre I drive in it.

Many people ask me why I’m still driving an old hatchback. I throw them the keys and say, “find out for yourself”. They always come back with big stupid grins all over their faces and shaking their heads in disbelief. It uses about 6 litres per 100 kilometres of petrol and fits beautifully into my ridiculously small carpark at work.