Double Bubble

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You don’t see many cars with the signature Zagato Double Bubble roof design, aside from a few exclusive Aston Martin Supercars, the odd hyper car and some great racing cars of the 50s and 60s.  And you certainly won’t buy one without a very large sack of cash, unless it’s a rather fetching Peugeot RCZ, like this one. Read on...

Zagato is an Italian coachbuilder that started in 1919 with an aim to introduce aeronautical designs to cars. One of those signature Zagato features was the double bubble roof, which is two raised bubbles above the driver and passenger’s heads. The idea was to lower the roof line for better aerodynamics while giving enough room for people’s heads. It also created two creases that gave better roof rigidity.  Zagato went on to build special edition road and race cars for Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Abarth and many others.

The Peugeot RCZ is more than a homage to Zagato’s double bubble; it’s also a decent performer and drivers car. It pitted itself against Audi’s TT and, in many ways, won. It’s roomier, more entertaining to drive and more striking to look at.  And for a strictly 2+2 seat coupe, making it fairly niche market it sold nearly 68,000 units in its five year reign.

The critical response to the RCZ certainly helped sales. Top Gear voted it best coupe in 2010, it won best coupe three years on the bounce at Auto Express as well as loads of others. Peugeot had probably forgotten how it felt to get such praise.

This NZ new example is the 156hp model with an auto transmission from 2012.  For such a cool looking car, that drives as well as it looks and is just that bit different, the auction estimate of $9000 - $11000 seems very reasonable. And that Zagato inspired ‘double bubble’ roof is plain gorgeous. Be different and sensible at the same time. More details here.