Pikes Peak International Hill Climb has seen quite many four-wheel monsters, but the Red Bull-sponsored Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak might top them all. Peugeot’s newly developed machinery will compete in the Unlimited Class, where only the sky is the limit when it comes to power.
Thanks to the 3.2-liter bi-turbo V6 engine, this 875 kg car behaves like a paper napkin in the jaw of an angry pit-bull.
Peugeot made huge efforts to build the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak, but then they encountered another problem: this car is definitely not for novice drivers. So they hired Sebastian Loeb, the Frenchman who won nine World Rally championships. After the first test runs at the high-security track at La Ferté-Vidame, in northwestern France, even Loeb was astonished by the brutal force of the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak.
“The Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak is a rocket! It’s so powerful! The first time you drive it, each gear change practically stuns you. The shifts are really brutal, and it takes a little time to anticipate the sudden jarring. You get used to it, but it was quite disorienting to begin with.” – he said after the first laps.
The Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak is totally custom-built having the wide tires of an endurance racing prototype, the differential of a WRC car, and the downforce, acceleration and breaking of a Formula 1 car. Under its mean-looking carbon bodywork there is a tubular steel frame with a V6 3.2-litre bi-turbo petrol engine delivering 875hp through a four-wheel drive transmission.
That is enough power to take the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak from 0-62 miles per hour in 1.8 seconds. If the driver has enough road to keep on with full throttle, it can hit 125 in 4.8 seconds and 150 in 7.0 flat. Now that is very fast even for the Pikes Peak. Consider the narrow, 20-kilometre track going up the Colorado mountain at an altitude 4,301 metres, and it will be obvious that Loab will have absolutely no room for error.
This post was written by Zoltan, who writes for Firm Guide. Since he was a small kid, he was passionate about technolgy: airplanes, cars, bicycles, you name it. He also loves to write. Today he is living his dream: he’s writing about cars.
