They call it ‘The Cruiser’.

And so far, the only South Africans who haven’t shown anything but respect for our Peugeot 607 are the baboons at the Cape of Good Hope.

After our visit there, a trip to the car wash was necessary to get the pawmarks off the roof, bonnet and boot.

We were lucky, though. At least somebody warned us to close the doors of the car quickly when we got out. The people in the VW Caravelle beside us didn’t get that advice and found out the hard way how the baboons get inside an open car real quick in search of food.

It is one real tough job to evict them. Particularly when miffed over the fact that all they could find was a plastic bag with a tube of sun screen in it!

You don’t mess with an angry baboon. And you just hope they don’t mess in your car ...

It has been a while since we drove the top-of-the-line Peugeot, and one forgets just what an accomplished executive cruiser it is.

Ours is a 3-litre petrol, the engine mated to an autobox with sequential manual operation capability. It came loaded with everything - leather seats, full climate control, dual xenon headlights, and that very important element in Capetown, central deadlocking.

Carjacking at gunpoint is one of the hazards here. The option our Peugeot doesn’t have is a flamethrower gizmo to discourage such activity, which we’ve read about ... but is not a Peugeot-approved extra.

And to put the whole crime thing into focus, only this week two police people were shot down the road from us, one fatally, just because they approached a group of people to ask them questions.

But back to the car. For the Grand Tour of the Western Cape that we are about, they don’t come much better than the 607.

As there are four of us sharing the driving, and Trish’s hubbie Kevin is as big as I am, there has been ample opportunity to sample front and back accommodation.

The front seats have electric adjustment, the rear ones, naturally, don’t need it. All are supremely comfortable, while the leg and headroom in the back is more than needed even for my physique.

Capetown is a city of 3.5 million people, a lot of whom drive cars. Yet the traffic moves well, even at peak times as far as we can see. Instead of trying to discourage motorists from entering the city centre, they accommodated them, and three or four of the main motorways converge on the waterfront area.

They also seem to run their traffic light sequences to keep the cars moving on the main arteries through the suburbs, while at the same time allowing cross traffic to get by in reasonable numbers when the signals DO change.

They should try this on the Naas Road ...

The V6 is as smooth as they come, effortlessly swishing the 607 along the ups and downs and the carefully cambered curves of a road system that so far seems brilliant and leaves us green with envy when we think of our congested circumstances back home.

We took one afternoon to go to the southwesternmost tip of Africa, Cape Point, which means that this year alone I have been to this place and to the most northerly point in Europe at Nordkapp in Norway!

Apart from the grandeur of the scenery at the Cape, the other interesting thing is the number of shipwrecks marked on the local maps, a reminder that this can be a place of fatal fury as well as one of beauty.

It was also the point from where South Africa’s air and naval forces watched out on a secret radar system for the U-Boats that preyed on Allied shipping carrying much-needed supplies around the continent during WW2.

Luggage for four is literally swallowed up in the cavernous boot of the 607, and even with all four of us and our baggage up, the big Peugeot’s suspension seemed barely to be affected.

Down here, the flagship 607 is priced around €47,000, about €7,000 cheaper than in Greedy McCreevy land.

That rates it pricewise in between the Audi A6 3-litre and the Merc E270.

Mercs and BMWs are big in South Africa, perhaps because both companies have manufacturing plants here (the C-Class and the 3-Series cars sold in Ireland are all SA-built).

But it is our ‘Cruiser’ that has been getting the real interested attention wherever we’ve been so far.