This was a Peugot 208 which we leased from AutoFrance for three weeks. We had heard about the problems with regular rentals, especially with regard to insurance. A friend and Francophile, Milton Schaeffer, told us that Autofrance was the way to go. They lease you a brand new Peugot for a minimum of three weeks, cover insurance and provide road service. You bring it back and they get to sell it at a much reduced price because of some kind of tax on new vehicles in France. Everybody wins.
Ours was great and it was nice to drive a standard transmission again. Especially at 130 (sometimes 150, when Vicki was driving) kilometers an hour. Its size was also a benefit. While it held the two of us, and sometimes two others, as well as our luggage comfortably, it could fit into places that I would not have wanted to take a larger vehicle. Vicki could parallel park it in spaces that had inches to spare.
And it handled the cobblestones quite well.
The only negative was the previously mentioned sorciere (witch) in the GPS who would take us to dead-end streets or to streets on which we could not turn, demand that we u-turn when we chose a different path, or go silent once we decided where we wanted to go, as if pissed off at us. We would enter multiple waypoints only to find that she had elected to eliminate all but the one she liked.
Sometimes, we swore she chose a path that took us by the most touristy areas. I believe that the GPS providers have accepted money from the local powers to make sure that we had to pass their way.
In spite of her shortcomings, we eventually reached our many destinations. The Peugot was delivered slightly dirtier with 3581 new kilometers on it.
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Location:Belgium
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