Peugeot’s overlooked heroes
The Peugeot brand is more than 210 years old. Which is a lot. And no, you don’t have to be a maths genius or history buff to realise that makes the French car maker significantly older than the first car.
Peugeot spent its first few years making salt and pepper grinders and tools, but fortunately it made the switch to cars or we wouldn’t have had road-car legends such as the 205 GTI.
Icons like the 205 GTI always get plenty of column inches, but there are plenty of Peugeots that made a big noise when new, but you’ll hardly hear a whisper about these days.
Cars like the 1984 Quasar pictured here, a supercar-shaped version of the mighty Group B 205 T16 rally car.
Join us as we celebrate 21 less well-remembered classics from Peugeot’s history.
1. 405 T16
Peugeot had been WRC champion twice with the crazy mid-engined 205 T16, but after Group B was banned it turned its attention to events like Paris-Dakar and Pikes Peak.
The 405 T16 used the Group B 205’s running gear in a chassis stretched to fit the proportions of Peugeot’s new 405 saloon.
With Ari Vatanen at the wheel Peugeot set a new Pikes Peak record in 1988: you’ll find an amazing video of the attempt called Climb Dance on YouTube.
2. 405 Mi16
Peugeot was famous for its hot hatches in the 1980s, but it also did a mean sports saloon in the form of the 405 Mi16.
A twin-cam head on top of the 1.9-litre block used in the biggest of the 205 GTI models generated 158bhp – fairly serious power for the time – and rivals couldn’t get close when the road turned twisty.
3. L45
A crowd of 90,000 watched Jules Goux win the 1913 Indianapolis 500 at the wheel of a 7.6-litre L76 Peugeot, and win $20k for himself in the process.
The Peugeot’s sophisticated 16v dohc ‘four’ helped it maintain an average of 76.59mph and laid a template other Indy cars followed for years to come.
The smaller L45, pictured, came third at Indy in 1916, was Peugeot’s spare car at the 1914 Lyon Grand Prix, and sold in November 2017 for £5.6m.
4. Type 1
It was only 27 years before that Indy win that Peugeot had produced its very first car. The Peugeot family manufacturing business began in 1810 and built coffee grinders, bikes and tools through the 19th century.
But in 1886 Peugeot presented its first car, or more accurately, motorised tricycle. A steam-powered three-wheeler, the 1886 Type 1 had tiller steering and a top speed of 16mph.
5. Type 2
By 1890 Armand Peugeot had split from the family business to create a new Peugeot car company and a new Peugeot car.
The Type 2 switched from steam to petrol power after Peugeot negotiated the use of Gottlieb Daimler’s new internal combustion engines, which were built by Panhard. It was no GTI, but represented a massive improvement over the Type 1.
6. 505 GTI
But Peugeot did stick the GTI badge on some unlikely vehicles, including its huge 505 saloons and estates.
Power came from a 2.2-litre engine and drove the rear wheels, making this the only rear-wheel drive Peugeot GTI.
7. 505 Dangel
But even stranger than the 505 GTI is this 505 Dangel. Alsace-based Dangel converted the 505 Break (estate) to four-wheel drive and jacked up the suspension, perfect for customers who demanded real go-anywhere capabilities from their Peugeots.
8. Bébé
Peugeot’s second car to wear the Bébé badge was an affordable run-around designed by a man who would become synonymous with cars almost no one could afford: Ettore Bugatti.
The little 855cc four-cylinder engine produced 10bhp, giving it a top speed of just under 40mph.
9. 504
This list is all about forgotten Peuegots, but it was impossible to forget the 504 saloon and estate in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Peugeot built over 3m examples of the ’69 European Car of the Year winner, making them a common sight long after European production finished in 1983.
They’re less common these days, except in Africa, where you could buy a new, locally assembled 504 right up until 2006.
10. 406 Coupé
‘Still want that Ferrari?’ asked Autocar magazine’s cover line in May 1997 when it road tested the 406 Coupé.
Well, of course we did, but for those who couldn’t stretch to a Ferrari 456, the 406, another pretty four-seat GT from the pen of Pininfarina, made an enticing real-world alternative.
11. 309 GTI-16
Always overshadowed by its 205 little brother, the 1.9-litre 309 GTI is a forgotten Peugeot classic in its own right.
But Peugeot fans in left-hand-drive markets could buy a 309 with the 158bhp 16-valve engine from the 405 Mi16 saloon.
12. P4
If the P4 looks familiar, it’s because it’s basically a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen fitted with a Peugeot 604 engine and finished in PSA’s Sochaux plant.
The P4 was the result of demand from the French military for something that could replace the WW2-spec Hotchkiss M201 Jeeps it had been using since the 1940s.
13. 601C Eclipse
When Mercedes-Benz wowed the world with its little SLK roadster’s retractable hardtop in 1996, few people remembered that Peugeot – with the help of coachbuilder Pourtout – had got there first a good 60 years earlier.
14. 206 CC
Having set Mercedes straight about the SLK, Peugeot created a modern coupé-cabrio of its own, in the form of the 206 CC.
This supermini-based two-plus-two generated huge interest, sold well, and the 2.0 version’s GTI-sourced engine provided decent go. But they’re now largely forgotten and excellent value.
15. 306 D-Turbo
Before the Ford Focus appeared in 1998, Peugeot’s 306 was the small family car to beat. Even the basic models were fun to drive, but the warm XSi and hot GTI-6 (not forgetting its stripped-down Rallye offshoot) really were a riot.
But arguably the most significant of the speedy versions was the 90bhp D-Turbo. It wasn’t the first diesel hot hatch – VW got there earlier with the Golf GTD – but it was the 306 that cemented the idea in our brains that diesel could be fun.
16. 404
Introduced in 1960, the Pininfarina-designed 404 saloon enjoyed a long life (it was still being built under licence in 1991), and the respect of a certain Enzo Ferrari, who used Peugeots as his personal cars for years.
It was also a bit of a motorsport legend in its own right, winning the Safari Rally four times between 1963 and 1968, and in 1965 this bizarre-looking one-seat 404 set a new diesel speed record, averaging 99mph over 3106 miles (5000km) at the Monthléry Autodrome.
17. 402
With its swoopy Art Deco-inspired styling and headlights concealed behind a shield-shaped radiator grille, the 1935 402 created a futuristic style for Peugeot’s cars that would last right through the 1930s.
18. 204
Peugeot is well known for making front-wheel-drive cars fun, but it didn’t build its first front-driver until 1965.
The agile and roomy 204 was well regarded and Peugeot shifted over 1.5m in its home market, but import duties hampered its success in markets like the UK.
19. 605
Two years after the successful launch of the 405, Peugeot applied the same styling recipe to create its 605 big brother.
Road testers were impressed, but most buyers thought it looked too much like a 405 for a supposed luxury car. Still, it remained in production for 10 years.
20. 205 Rallye
The 205 Rallye is to the GTI what a Porsche 911 RS 2.7 is to the turbo. Built to homologate Peugeot’s sub-1300cc rally cars, the Rallye got the GTI’s spats and sports seats, but swapped its injected 1600cc engine for a high-revving 1294cc unit with two Weber carbs.
It was only available in left-hand drive and not sold in the UK – the 205 Rallye Brits did get was merely a striped-up 205 XS.
21. Oxia concept
Named after a region on Mars, this technologically advanced 1988 concept was an evolution of the earlier Quasar.
It featured carbonfibre bodywork and a twin-turbo 2.8-litre V6 that enabled it to achieve a staggering 217mph in the hands of a Peugeot test driver, at the Nardò test track in southern Italy.
And it wasn’t the only 200mph Peugeot: the French company won Le Mans three times between 1992 and 2009.
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