Friday, June 5, 2015

The Fastest Lion: Peugeot 407 (Part 1)

Like humans and animals, cars also always have an outstanding leader.  In the “lion family”, the leader is the Peugeot 407 with a 3-liter V6 engine. Of course, car leaders set the tone for technical solutions, trimming quality and rich equipment. However, leaders cannot claim the top lines in sales summaries due to high prices, but in everything else, they don’t give even the slightest chance to their “kin”.


The main difference of the most expensive 407 is in the engine- it’s more powerful than those installed on the rest of the representatives of the company, including the executive 607. So the 3-liter sedan turned out to be the fastest lion in the pride. At the same time, this engine is not at all something exceptional in the world of motors. Yes, it produces 211 HP, which is not bad. Yes, as compared with 3-liter engines of the previous generations, it has 3 kW more power and 5 N m more torque. All this was achieved through an improved control of valve timing and a new muffler. But, for instance, the BMW engine of the same volume produces 20HP more.

 Sad is that the 407 got heavier than its predecessor (Peugeot 406) by 150 kg and almost caught up with the next model of a higher class- the Peugeot 607.  It’s natural that the 407 loses to the 406 in terms of agility conceding half a second (6 versus 5.5) during the acceleration from 80-120 km/h. But the most frustrating fact is that it became more voracious (average fuel consumption: the 407-12.5L/100km, the 406-11.7L/100km). The problem was alleviated (but not finally resolved) by the use of a super-modern 6-speed gearbox, which engages in a sequential manner. This gearbox is installed on all 3L models. Note that the top version of the 406 was equipped with a traditional 4-speed automatic gearbox.
To be continued...

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