Trintignant, luxury trainer for Peugeot
A great actor with an often tragic existence, Jean-Louis Trintignant also benefited from a sacred talent as a pilot. He drove Monte Carlo several times, but also the 24 Hours of Le Mans or the 24 Hours of Spa. There we see it in Peugeot training videos, designed to make arguments for salespeople at the launch of the restyled 505 in the summer of 1985 to knock out the competition. This one is rich because in these places we see the Alfa Romeo 90 2.0, the Audi 100 CD, the BMW 520i, the Citroën CX 22 TRS, the Ford Scorpio 2.0 GL, the Mercedes 190C, the Opel Rekord 1.8 GL, the Renault 25 GTX, the Volvo 740 GLE and finally a Peugeot 505 Tour (click on the vehicle names to go to the Youtube video).
But even in this context, the actor surprises with his natural and calm charisma, but also delivers very amusing and often spicy comments that show his expressionless side. “She throws up on the front wheels”, “Only one rear wheel stays on the road and the other wanders around”, “Ah, she squeaks, you can hear her clearly”, “Oh, the engine, it’s a disaster”, ” You have to contend with the weight of the car and the weight of the years”… The deadliest valve will fall on the Volvo, but we’ll let you discover it.
We also see that Trintignant really pushes the cars to their limits, sometimes beyond them, but in complete relaxation and without buckling up. A combination? Jeans and a pink polo shirt will do just fine. It’s a different era, more carefree than ours, when you could shoot on a Lédenon circuit with little or no safety elements. Trintignant is not interviewed by a Peugeot member, but by another actor, Jean-Claude Aubé, whom we will see in 1988 in Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman, Already Twenty Years Old” alongside the great Jean-Louis.
These little training videos, which are available on Youtube, are all little gems, even if the soundtrack doesn’t always match the picture (even downright weird for BMW).
