It’s official, the battle for the fastest front-wheel drive cars in the world is as intense as the battle of hypercars! Just after Seat reigned its supremacy at the Nurburgring and Renault hinted that they are claiming a similar throne, now Peugeot has declared a war with its rivals with its Peugeot 308 R concept. This hot 308 is part of Peugeot’s plans for a motorsport-inspired charge, which includes breaking a 31-year-old Nurburgring lap record.
The 272bhp Peugeot 308 R is currently under development and will be launched in 2015. Under the hood lies the similar 1.6-litre turbocharged unit from BMW as seen in the RC-Z R model. The car is set to benchmark against front-wheel hot hatches such as Renault Megane RS265, Seat Leon Cupra 280, Volkswagen Golf Gti R and Honda Civic Type R. It seems that have Peugeot found the recipe for fast front-wheel drive machines by adding the moniker “R” into its hatch just like what their rivals did.
Peugeot Sport head Bruno Famin said that the performance arm will have a significant role to play in upcoming production cars and future “small-volume specialist projects”. Famin also hinted that the French firm is looking forward to break a 6:11.13-sec lap of Germany’s Nurburgring set in 1983 by Stefan Bellof in a Porsche 956 race car. But after knowing their achievement in last year Pikes Peak challenge, expect Peugeot to ride a similar momentum in the quest to break the record at the ring.
Nonetheless, it looks like Volkswagen engineers will have sleepless nights knowing that the challenger from “The France Lion” could dethrone the Golf Gti from becoming the king of hot hatch!
[Source: CarAdvice AU]
