Small car perfect for French sojourn

Jim Byers/Toronto Star

Corsica's roads are smooth and easy, not to mention friendly, once you get out of the mountains. But the higher elevations are never far away.

Jim Byers

TRAVEL EDITOR

AJACCIO, CORSICA–I should’ve put my foot down.

I had just landed at Ajaccio airport, sorry, Napoleon Bonaparte airport, in Ajaccio, Corsica (the little guy’s hometown), and was walking with a tourism official to get my rental car.

I had just spent three days bombing around Bordeaux and the luscious, castle-strewn Dordogne valley of southwestern France on curvy but relatively flat roads in a Renault Mégane, and had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to get the damn thing into reverse, being an automatic transmission/minivan guy for most of the past 15 years. And I never quite got used to the shifting. There was a light that would come on recommending (I think) when I should upshift, and I always thought it was too early.

Still, it was a nice, tight little car and held a big suitcase and a smaller one in the trunk and was just fine for me.

But here I was in Corsica, and I knew the roads would be tighter. And steeper. There are 100 peaks of more than 1,000 metres or more on this tiny, narrow island that’s part of France but feels Italian. You can go from sea level to 1,000 metres in about the time it takes to play “Hey Jude,” so you know the roads are a touch different than southern Ontario.

I had expected another small car, but I was instead greeted at the Hertz parking lot with what looked like a miniature SUV — a Peugeot 3008. While excited to get the chance to drive a new style of French car for the second time in a few days, I thought, “Damn, this thing’s BIG.”

The tourism woman insisted it’s what I would need for the drive over the mountain passes I had coming up.

“How about something smaller,” I said, pointing to a Mégane.

“We find journalists want bigger cars. You want power in the mountains.”

But what about the villages?

”Oh, you’ll be fine. You want power in the mountains.”

In fairness, she said I could get something smaller. But I’d have to go back to the rental counter and it looked like rain; not what I had hoped for in Corsica in May. So I gave it a five-second test drive in the parking lot and backed it up, and it seemed okay. Not as nimble as my beloved Mégane, but easier to manoeuvre than the Chrysler minivan I traded in for a Nissan Sentra once my kids left home.

So, off I went. It was fine the first day — until I had to park on a small, winding street near the seaport in old-town Ajaccio. I think I had cars backed up to the French Riviera as I moved the beast into a parking spot, but I did okay. The beeping device to warn me when I was too close to the next guy’s bumper was nice; something I’d never had in any car I’d driven.

But it got pretty annoying the next day driving through the impossibly narrow streets of Sartène, a grey-stone mountain village once called the most Corsican of Corsica towns.

The thing beeped and clicked and screeched warnings to me constantly as I inched my way down one of the two main streets, pedestrians crowding in next to me with bags full of baguettes and Corsican cheese.

“Beep, beep, beep, BEEP, BEEP!!!!!”

“Yeah, I KNOW I’m a little close,” I found myself shouting at the car. “I KNOW the cars are about a whisker away from your $5,000-to-repair-a-tiny-scrape fender, but what on earth do you want to me to do? This car is TOO FRIGGIN’ BIG!”

I’d tell you the name of the streets I tried to navigate but it’s almost impossible to find street signs in these small towns. It’s also impossible to tell how far you are to the next village in Corsica. There are plenty of directional signs at the roundabouts, but unless you’re on the main “highways,” meaning the better two-lane roads, you won’t get mileage distances.

”There’s no point,” one local told me. “Depending on weather and trucks, it might take you 20 minutes to make a drive one day and 40 the next.”

I managed the small streets of Sartène and incredibly lovely Bonifacio all right, but cursed myself constantly for not insisting on something more petite and manageable.

Then I had my big road challenge; a twisty, turny son-of-a-gun of a road up from the coastal town of Porto Vecchio towards the beautiful village of Zonza and then up towards the jagged peaks of the Col de Bavella. After 15 minutes I was in a cold sweat; the road arcing and curving and slicing ever upwards around a tiny town called L’Ospedale. The Peugeot had pep to spare, so the tourism woman was right about that. But I kept seeing Corsican drivers zooming by in tiny cars or moderate-sized ones like my Mégane, so why on earth did I need a car that, to paraphrase the B-52s in their hit song “Love Shack,” “seats about 20?”

I still don’t have the answer to that. I managed fine. But if I go back, I’m taking a compact.

Travel editor Jim Byers can be reached at jbyers@thestar.ca

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