It's Sunday morning,
this car came straight from Sardinia.
It wasn't easy to find a VTS in the condition we wanted:
it's basically original but a little louder,
I actually forced the owner to put the original wheels,
the original steering wheel back on, because he mounted a sports one
(more useful for the driving position of the Saxo)
but the car has to be judged as if it has just gotten out of the factory.
So aside from the straight pipe exhaust,
there are these aftermarket sports seats
but the fabric is the original one:
something that impressed me because it's the first time I see this kind of thing.
With these seats and the sports wheel, the position becomes a lot more racing,
the right one, the one we all love.
Same story as the 106 Rallye I drove a while back:
these cars were made under the assumption of being tuned after.
This is the reason why I love these cars:
they were overtly built as "starting points" to make yourself YOUR car.
If you wanted a street car or a racecar for the track,
you had a point where to...
...start anyway:
this owner tuned it as a street car and it kept it very nicely,
not many Saxos are well-kept.
Since I asked him to put the original wheels back on,
he put some new tyres on too.
He himself was astonished by the car's behavior change,
just by changing the steering wheel and mounting smaller wheels.
He was desperate about the feeling of softness from the car,
the steering output was different too...
He was used to the modifications he made:
all this just to say that clearly they have to be judged
from their original conditions, but it's easy to drastically
change the behavior of these little French cars.
However, understanding how good a starting point like this one is requires skills:
it's not that common to find a car that normally behaves like this,
but the Saxos and 106s, as well as the Clios, are very hard to match.
They have a disarmingly easy drivability,
something positive for a car that has to go fast...
It's a negative thing when you realize she's a friendly talker who
asks you for respect though, as if it was a 500 bhp supercar,
because she's a bastard...
The driving key for the Saxo VTS is quite clear from the first meters:
you have to help the steering by using the throttle on the bends,
so you can overcome the "lack" (even if it's not one), the peculiarity
of these little French girls which is a violent oversteer tendency
when the driver decides to lift the gas around the bend
causing several special effects.
On the 106s and Saxos there is a natural selection between the "Sunday hotheads"
who end their race in hospital and people who can speak their minds about driving,
making the owners of some more powerful cars worry.
A great satisfaction for those who understand its driving philosophy.
Rally is in the air, you can smell it inside the Saxo VTS:
something not so difficult to assume even if you have never driven one,
it doesn't disappoint the expectations.
I always loved this kind of cars: projects that start from the same line
and nobody knows where the end will be,
there's always a better part and you never stop looking out of the window,
waiting for the courier who delivers the new shock absorbers kit,
the new tyres, the wheel spacers, everything: it had always been a school.
How can you not love her?
It will always be the late 90s and early 2000s "bad guys" car,
those who frightened the daddy boys with these little cherry bombs.
You quickly learn to play with the right engine speed, so...
here she goes...
you dance on the oversteer's edge, even though it's triggered in the "wrong way".
You can be sharp on the way in, despite the latter is a difficult thing,
and when you lift... the car tends to oversteer.
As I said before, you can clearly... use this to your advantage,
so that the front wheels are straight, the rear skids
and you can open the throttle immediately, before the apex,
trusting the rear end job.
It's so cool... Clearly it's not as easy as it sounds but once you understood,
you can earn a nice sensitivity,
something we forgot nowadays since the electronics doesn't permit it
(which is great since it's not something for everyone).
Clearly this is something that happens on tight corners,
on the fast bends it's a whole different story
because this behavior becomes only a risk, it doesn't help you at all:
many realized it at their expense,
an "oversteer-ish" behavior with a short wheelbase
on fast corners is dangerous, it's not a pleasure like on this one...
Again, it's something that concerns only the slow corners.
Once you made peace with the fact you don't have to lift
the gas pedal on large corners, but you must strive to keep it down,
the driving experience of these French boxes is something really
...unexpected for their costs.
They are very cheap,
but the feeling is huge and I love them, I always loved them because of this...
They are cars made to drive.
I would start by talking about the engine:
the naturally aspirated 16v 1.6 mounted on the VTS
made 120 horsepower in its stock tune and it's not the engine
we dream about at night, the one that glue yourself to the seat
and frightens your girlfriend,
but it's perfectly suitable for the car.
Obviously you have to rev it high, make it sing over 3500 rpm.
Its best is on top...
You feel the shortness of breath of the stock car...
Coupled to the engine, there's a good gearbox,
mechanically good but the lever sensation on the hand
is a bit unusual, you have to get used to it.
You struggle a bit during the first minutes to understand
how to use it quickly because it's not very quick in the 2nd-to-3rd change,
but I don't mind it because it gives me an "old-school" feeling,
it seems like I'm driving an older car than the Saxo.
I like it because it assumes that you know the car well.
I don't mind this quirk also because everything else in the car is very direct:
during the 106 test I amazed many people (even myself)
by saying that the steering was not as direct as I imagined.
As you probably know, 106 and Saxo mechanics are basically shared,
they are very similar and the steering is no exception.
It's not as direct as I would but that doesn't mean it's not precise:
it actually is, but it suffers a bit on this specific car.
Tires and suspensions change the car a lot.
I wanted to know how the stock car behaved,
clearly whoever drove these little sports cars
knows where the credits of the stock car start and, above all, end
to appreciate it even more; in my case, I most appreciate the fact
that the car behaves well even with street tires, little wheels:
again, it's a car in which they mount this steering wheel
just to drive from the dealer to your garage.
The owners hardly kept this wheel, as well as the seats, the pedals,
the exhaust, the suspensions, the tires, the wheels etc...
These cars weren't expensive probably because of this
and left the owner the freedom of choice.
Talking about suspensions, the layout is very simple, it's a classic.
The weight is not a problem for the Saxo, as well as the 106 and the first Clios.
This trend was a bit lost, the weight is now something that concern the brands,
so they use lightweight materials (that means expensive).
Someone in the comments told me that my battle is similar to
Don Quixote's one and they are right because I try to say that
everything seems wrong to me, the modern way of thinking about the weight and
several electronic gadgets... and I know nothing will change if I say it,
but I'll keep on saying it anyway.
Back to the car, despite being a simple car, it doesn't lack of sensibility:
everyone with a degree of sports wish can sit in here and enjoy the drive,
not going fast but at least enjoy the drive.
I had the chance to... drive these French boxes with many tuned parts,
owned by people who knew them well and understood where to modify,
improving a project which was already excellent.
So I can tell you that this car drives really good but I also know its potential,
which is really high.
A tuned Saxo VTS is also nice to see, I still turn around when one passes by.
This is a 2001 model, the production was nearly over, they stopped after 2-3 years.
We understood by now that we tend to ruin the things
we human beings make and French cars are not an exception.
So in conclusion, the car passes with flying colors (even though I already knew it):
it's basically a must, it'll soon become one.
For those who grew in the 90s, there's no need for this video
to say that the Saxo VTS is one of the
most valid and less expensive sports cars of the modern automotive history.
When I saw "F50" and "Citroën Saxo" few days apart on the Drive Experience calendar,
something that many of the people who know me better often asked me,
especially during the first months of our work, which is:
"Will you get tired of driving less powerful cars as time goes by?"
The fact that the Saxo was after the F50 answers that question.
I already knew the answer: this passion is not only about power
and refined technology, like on the F50, but always and above all about
the driving pleasure and that doesn't always require an high budget,
so you can have fun with 120 bhp as well as 520 bhp,
and this reassured me, along with the improved disks on the tested car,
which solved one of the Saxo's most told problem:
a bit too much fading under breaking,
easy to solve since the car is light and hardly goes beyond 900 kilos.
If you have the chance, drive one because the Saxo never fails:
it's just as I remember it, great fun for all budgets.
Written and directed by Davide Cironi
Filmed by Stefano Ianni
Aerial shots by Mattia Nardis
Thank you to Michele Cogotzi for the Saxo
Translated by Elia Pozzani
Visit our website WWW.DRIVEEXPERIENCE.IT for more!
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