My Family Peugeot history

[tulaweb]

I thought it was cool how your Mom was a repeat Peugeot owner and that your car has some great sentimental value for both you and your Mom.

Rabin

The Family history, as best I recall, goes like this. In 1974 my parents bought a 504 Diesel (azure blue). That was my Father's daily driver (I would have been 21 years old at the time). I remember lobbying for that car vs the Volkswagen Diesel (fox?) they were also considering. In 1976 my father fell asleep at the wheel (damn those comfy Peugeot seats) and totaled his car. The insurance company didn't have any resale history on the car yet and was having a hard time setting a value. They called him up and said they found a Peugeot Diesel, of the same year and similar mileage, for sale a few hundred miles away, and if he wanted it, he could pay the deductible and they would pay the rest. So he then had a maroon one instead of the blue one. In 1978 they bought another 504 Diesel which became my Mother's daily driver. It was a metallic gold color. In 1982 they traded in the 76 maroon 504 and got a White 505 Diesel. It was a base model, 4sp no sunroof, manual door locks, widows and mirrors. In 1985 they traded in the 78 504 on the Glacier Blue 505S TD which became my mother's DD. In 1990 they bought a 405 on a European delivery program, where they bought it through a local dealer in NJ but picked it up in France. They spent 3 or 4 weeks traveling around Europe with it and then returned it to a port city for shipment to the US. This was a US model with a European exhaust system and a few other European parts. Peugeot then replaced the non US parts and put it on a boat to the US and my parents picked it up at the Dealer they originally bought it from. My recollection was that there was little or no extra charge for this arrangement. They were not offered much trade in value for the white 505 so I bought it from them for whatever the dealer was offering them, and had it till 1995 when the transmission went, and I junked it. My wife was driving it for a while, but she really hated driving a stick shift, so we bought a new Honda for her, which I have to say gave us 250,000 absolutely trouble free miles. In 1993 when Peugeot announced they were going home, my Mother got a new 405 that the dealer considered to be kind of an orphan. I forget what she paid but I think it was less that half the sticker price. I bought her 505 at that time, and it is my car today. In 1995 my parents retired to New Hampshire with their two 405s and were told there were no Peugeot dealers within 100 miles. I don't think that was true, but they had some difficulty finding any place with Peugeot experience to service them. In 2000 my father traded in his 1990 405 and bought a new Subaru Legacy. About 7 or 8 years ago my mother was in her 405 on her way to play tennis, when she was T-boned by a teenager in a pickup truck. The car was totaled and she nearly was too. While she was in the hospital, I went with my father to get their belongings from the car, and approaching the car was really shocking. It didn't look like anyone could have survived it. But on closer inspection, the passenger compartment was completely intact. Every crush zone that was meant to crush was completely crushed but the part that wasn't supposed to crush protected the occupant perfectly. So between that and the 74 that my father totaled, I've had both my parents survive potentially fatal accidents, protected by their Peugeots. By that time my father had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was near the end of his driving days so they decided not to replace the Peugeot and just keep the Subaru. Last December my father passed away, just shy of his 90th birthday. My mother who is 88 is still driving the Subaru.

So that's my story.

[pushgo]

Wow! What an incredible story....thank you for sharing it with us.

[Bean]

Agreed! Thanks very much for that.

It's stories like that that tend to bind a close knit community like this - one of the things I absolutely LOVE about being a Peugeot aficionado.

Rabin

[ohms]

thank you for writing your story - that was great, and i got a lil teary eyed even

thank you for sharing it!

[JunktionFET]

That's a great ride Dave!

My Peugeot family history didn't start as early as yours, but it did begin with my grandparents. Upon retirement in 1984, my grandparents wanted to buy a new car. They had been eying a Jaguar XJ6 for a while, but my uncle who was a photographer and an apparent subscriber to Architectural Digest suggested they check out a Peugeot. That magazine was laden with Peugeot ads, and as a side note I retrieved all of those magazines from their den many years ago to save the ads.

Anyway, they test drove a silver 1984 STI at a local dealer. They knew the owner of the dealer and were given free reign to drive as long as they wanted to. They were gone for nearly 2 hours, returned with the sunroof open and old people music playing through the state-of-the-art 4 speaker 20watt AM/FM/Cassette audio system They were sold on the car, but wanted Winchester Gray. Since it was nearing Fall, they ordered a 1985 STI in that color. When they took delivery of the car, it had 2 miles on the odometer. My grandfather insisted they not drive the car for its PDI nor remove the plastic from the seats--he wanted to be the one to do that.

At the time I was nearly 9 years old, and the smell of the leather interior was so strong that to this day, when I get inside a truly premium car with a real leather interior, the smell takes me back. I should point out that both my brand new 2006 Acura TSX and 2007 Acura TL had "real" leather, but it never smelled anything like this. This was back when leather was leather I suppose.

Anyway, my uncle eventually bought one, as well as my brother, and my parents; all 505 sedans. Years later as Peugeot was withdrawing from the US market, we bought one of the last new 1991 SW8s with some crazy $5000 rebate. My first car at 16 was the 1984 STI my parents owned. There was a period of time in the mid to late 90s where friends of mine sort of "caught the bug", I suppose from seeing my enthusiasm for the brand, and they bought their own 505s, mostly Turbo sedans.

My grandfather died in 2001, and their long time Peugeot mechanic attended the funeral, which I thought was a class act. My grandmother continued to drive the car until several years ago when she was involved in a frontal collision which totaled the car. She sustained zero injuries. When she realized what had happened, she started crying and rested her head on the steering wheel. People at the accident scene thought the worst when they saw a little old lady slumped over inside the mangled car. As a child I remember her saying that she would hand the Peugeot down to me when the time came. I'm just glad she was alright and outlived the car.

I got out of the Peugeot scene in 2005 when I parted with my latest one--a 1982 505 turbodiesel. The 1985 turbodiesel I acquired early this year is the first non-Honda car or bike I've owned in nearly 7 years

[tulaweb]

My recent travels in Peugeotland, since I wrote the above history, are documented in various threads here but I thought a little summary to bring this story up to date here was in order.

Late last summer I drove into a flooded street, sucked water into the intake and hydrolocked the engine on the 1985 505. Removal of the injectors did not release the lock. I still don’t know exactly what bent but even with the head off, the crank will not budge.

Reading my distress call, Joe (JunktionFET) offered to sell me his 505STI, for use as an engine donor. Once I determined that my engine was not going to be reasonably repairable, I took him up on his offer and in mid September I took the bus down to Raleigh NC and drove his car back to New Jersey. The original plan was to immediately swap engines but, once I got back, I decided to drive Joe’s car for the winter and let it’s already rusty body take the road salt. About a month after I got the car from Joe, my wife, our cat and I evacuated from hurricane Sandy, in the 505 I got from Joe, after pushing the engineless one to the highest ground I could get it to. The water came just about up to the bottom of the doors on the car left behind but, other than damp carpeting, it made out OK. I’m now just about ready for the engine swap, so I can go back to daily driving the 505 that was originally my mother’s.

[Mike T]

That's a great story, Tulaweb.

I was not aware that Peugeot was doing European delivery as recently as 1990.

My late father bought his first Peugeot in Montreal Quebec, in the summer of 1966. It was a brown metallic car with tan leather seats, and KF2 injection. That car was assembled in Canada at the SOMA factory in St-Bruno-de-Montarville, on the south shore near Montreal. It was a fantastic car - we went in 1967 on a road trip to Virginia Beach. Wonderful highway car...

Then in 1969 he was posted to the Netherlands (Royal Canadian Air Force officer) so the 404 went over there with us. We lived in the rust belt in southern Limburg and at age 5 the car was starting to get rusty after its three years in Montreal and two more in acid rain hell. So in late 1971 he ordered a US model 504 sedan ZF (auto because he mistakenly thought my mother would get a drivers license thereafter) and he and I went to Sochaux for the delivery. The car's production was delayed by a day so we got to stay overnight in Le Cercle Hotel on the Sochaux factory grounds, surrounded by foundries and so on. It was wonderful! The dishes and cutlery had lion logos on them (my Dad unsuccessfully tried to buy some for me) and we got the car the next morning. We drove back through Belgium in pea soup fog and after following a car with a rear fog light for 100 km my Dad decided to have one installed on the 504. Upon delivery, the 504 had 4 headlights but instead of sealed beams, the lights were Cibié tungsten lamps with amber bulbs. Very cool....

In 1972 we moved back to Canada - the car was shipped to Montreal but the next posting was at CFB Calgary, so a 12 year old me and my Dad flew to Montreal to get the car and drive across the country together. It was a great trip. That car was in Calgary for 4 years with us and then we moved to North Vancouver in 1976. In 1977 the 504 had a small rust hole in the trunk next to the rear wheel arch (despite a Dinitrol treatment in NL) and he traded the car into Classic and Thorughbred Motors on Marine Drive for a 1977 504 gas 4 speed SL in claret metallic. It had the trapezoidal headlights and of course the monstrous bumpers. The car was supremely comfortable and fun to drive but the fuel consumption was poor. So in 1979 he sold it and bought a Renault 5 GTL, pocketing a few thousand (because the R-5 was a lot cheaper than what he got for the 504). That was his last Peugeot.

At the beginning of 1981 I bought my own Peugeot, a 1967 404 Coupé with Kugeifischer Injection, it was a rusty but great car...I ran it five years while a student in university. I sold it in 1985 and replaced it with a 1963 404 sedan from California, into which I dropped a fuel injected 404 engine from a scrapped Cabriolet. I had that car 5 years and then it died due to rust at age 27. In 1989 I bought my present 1966 404 Coupé Injection, which is a long, LONG term restoration project. I have all the OE sheet metal I need to restore it and I hope to begin around when the car turns 50 years of age.

In 1994 I bought a 405 DL, and we drove it for 15 years until its engine died of head gasket failure (oil in water and vice-versa, not pretty). In that car, my Dad and I reprised out 1972 trans-Canada drive, with him and I going to Montreal to see the 1998 Formula 1 race. It was a memorable trip, and a mere 8 years after that, my Dad had passed away at age 80. I was sure glad to have had that special time with him.

So I have owned at least one Peugeot continuously since February 1981 and our family's first Peugeot was bought nearly 47 years ago.

It's a damned shame that they leaft North America and it's also a shame that they're not making family cars that would be of any interest to me these days, even if they were still in this market.

[my3AWDgst]

WOW those are awesome stories guys. I enjoyed reading them and thanks for sharing.

[my3AWDgst]

I could share my Peugeot history but it's not as old or cool as some above.

All started back in 1992 in Serbia,I was 11 at the time when my eye site landed on MI16.

As a kid I loved the way car looked and at the same time I was collecting car cards(very similar to baseball cards) First card that was on the top was always red 405 MI16 and I had them all the way till 98 before I left to USA where I gave them to family friends kid. In 97 when I turned 16 and I stared to drive and work on cars but 205GTI and 405MI16 was out of price range and somewhat hard to fined. MKII Golf was too common so I settled for Ford XR2 and XR3(RS Turbo was out of price range) In 99 I got job In Euro shop where I worked and drove my first MI16,I was amazed how easy was to work on them and do MI16 swap to none MI16 405 cars. I loved the way MI16 engine sounds and how well the car drove. In 2002 owner purchased 91 405 Wagon and just a few short days later I talked him in to getting donor car for a swap. After few days 91 silver donor car was at the shop and swap was done,few days after that I got Wagon stripped for paint. That summer I quit to move on for better work place at near by Dealership,as years were getting by I was getting older and dragged away from Peugeot to the point where they got forgotten by Savo.
Here and there I talked to Euro shop owner and last year (2012) I got a call from him regarding 405 Wagon,and I was told it will go to scrap yard if Im not interested. It's hard to explain how I felt after that phone call with all those memory's about that car and was simply amazed that he still had it.
Long story short the tow and Wagon was free. Wagon was in bad state do to weather exposure and it was in the same state I left it in 2002.Pretty much only good thing left was 90.000 mile engine and transmission used from donor car.
I was disappointed and knew another 405 MI16 would be near impossible to fined.Day after day I looked on Craigs list with hope and two months later red 89 405 MI16 with bad engine was for sale.I could not believe my luck that there are some still left and all it needed was engine swap. 405 MI16 was three hours away and I knew no matter in what state car was in I was buying it. She was barn fined and not in very good condition as described but purchase price of $500 was talking to me and I bought it. It would be long five days till I could see my 405 MI16 but free three hour tow was worth the wait. When I got the news that she arrived I left work in rush to see my childhood dream car on my drive way,and boy ohhh boy was I happy to see it :-) right away I removed interior to wash all the nasty stuff that was there followed by carpet,dash and engine replacement. Few short days later she was alive passed smog and 12.000 miles later still on the road.Im very happy the way she drives and sounds,Im enjoying every single minute spent behind the steering wheel of that car and I remind my self every day of the car
cards and first car that was on top of them all. She was a long journey,very stubborn to get it running and at times hair pulling was necessary but nothing the less very happy with it.The photo angle on the car cards was the same angle my profile picture was taken :-) Im hopping you all enjoyed my Peugeot story.

Thank you

[my3AWDgst]

Here is the picture when she got home.

[Mike T]

Great stuff!

[andrethx]

interesting history! shame that the wagon was not in better shape. a while back on ebay there was a 405 mi16 wagon for sale, someone had taken the performance bits from an mi16 sedan & put them on a wagon...

andré

[my3AWDgst]

I still have the wagon and I would love to have it on the road again some day. I might do 4g63 AWD swap.

[SSB]

While I am sure many of you have heard to story of Red, I’m guessing there just might be as many who haven’t and Rabin suggested it should be documented here. So here goes:

In April of 1986 Peugeot 505 GL #405076 was sent to the United States and awaited its first retail purchaser on the West coast. However by a turn of fate it instead reluctantly became the star of, and sole survivor of a TV commercial it then went on to winning races and becoming a 2 time SCCA National Championship winning racecar.

The commercial was intended to dispel myths about the French namely that the French were only known as great lovers (and something about cheese). So the scene was created in an airport hangar in Van Nuys, California. The set depicted a large bay window overlooking a luxurious bed upon a Parke floor. When the voice over said; “If this is where you think the French perform best…” a Red V6 505 crashes through the window and fly’s over the bed and gracefully lands on the floor where the voice over says “….we suggest you drive the 6 cylinder Peugeot 505”.

Great, except………………. To save money it was decided to use a 505 STi 4 cylinder and fix it up to look like a V6 as they knew the car was going to be totaled. So a car is prepared and stunt driver gets into it, hits the ramp and, far less than gracefully, crashes through the window, lands in the middle of the bed, subsequently destroying the entire set. What to do? Being way over budget now, they went ahead and used a V6 as they wouldn’t have to fix it up. So the stunt driver got into the car, hit the ramp, crashes through the window and gracefully fly’s over the bed, abet at a 45 degree nose down angle. Not good. Now unbelievably over budget, the driver asks; “Do you have anything with more power??”

So, plucked out of the parking lot was #405076. Of course it was white, as all ’86 GL’s were, so it was repainted red, the deck spoiler was removed, the holes filled in, headrests were installed in the back seat, driving lights attached at the front, the Turbo air dam was removed and a pin stripped sunroof affixed. Voilà. This time the stunt driver hit the ramp, crashed through the window flew over the bed but almost crashed through the back side of the airport hangar trying to stop. Cut ! It’s a wrap !!

#405076 had a crushed oil pan, the “A” and “C” pillars were buckled, both mirrors were knocked off and the sheet metal above the tail lights had bent over the tops of the tail lights making them nearly impossible to remove plus the tail pipe was something less than round. The car shown at the end of the commercial, BTW, was actually shot before the first jump and is the STi. So now three brand new and damaged red 505’s were pushed to the side wall and awaited their fate.

In steps Bill Pavone, head of Peugeot Motors of America’s Promotions Department. To promote the performance image to the Peugeot, he offers SCCA racers a contingency package wherein the highest finishing Peugeot in class wins $500, $250 or $100 for 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd. Plus $5000 for a divisional title and $10,000 for a National title and you get a Dealer number so you can by your Peugeot parts at dealer cost. Oh and by the way, there are some wrecked cars against the far wall you can buy as well.

In steps Victor Van Tress and Tom Hughes who have been racing a co-owned Renault Alliance in the Renault Cup and prior to that shared an SSA Mustang. Both Ford and Renault had offered contingency programs so this Peugeot deal was not only good, they bought #405076 (hereinafter called Red) for less than the Renault had cost them. $7000 with 35 miles on it plus about 50 feet of air time. Peugeot had estimated that the damages were around $16,000. So in April of ’87, “Hello AutoPower? I need a roll cage for a Peugeot……..a Peugeot………P-E-U-G-E-O-T. Forget it, we’ll bring it down to you”. Next stop, Riverside Raceway July Double National. With still flattened oil pan, still bent A & C pillars and freshly installed mirrors and deck spoiler, Tom finishes 3^rd (1^st Peugeot) and I finished 1^st (1^st Peugeot) in SSB.

The rest is fairly well known, in three years of racing Red was in 44 National races and won $80,000 in prize money. They raced the following tracks all the while holding down regular jobs Monday through Friday:

· Riverside, CA

· Willow Springs, CA

· Carlsbad, CA

· Holtville,CA

· Firebird, AZ

· Phoenix, AZ

· Laguna Seca, CA

· Sears Point, CA

· Portland, OR

· Seattle, WA

· Denver, CO

· Pueblo, CO

· Ardmore, OK

· Hallette, OK

· Road Atlanta, GA

The last race Red ran in it had traveled 64,000 miles in just 3 years because they never towed it and drove it to work every day. They left it in allot of airport parking lots all over the country as well. After all that, they were told that used Peugeot's had virtually no resale value (especially red ones with blue interiors and holes in the floor), so it was driven it as a primary vehicle. 17 years later I bought a twin to it (sort of as it is an ’87 “S” with ABS and power windows and even a real sun roof) with 60,000 miles on it, named it Deuce and Red went into semi-retirement (meaning I just bring it out to terrorize those who think they are fast on Mulholland Drive) with an eye on vintage racing it again someday.

I believe Deuce will be the last car I need to buy.

[norcal505]

Great story. Vic, Mulholland is one of my favorites. We need to go dice up there sometime.

And by "dice", I mean try to chase you in my little E30

[tulaweb]

Here is my updated Family history, as best I recall. Most, if not all, of this has been documented earlier in this thread or elsewhere on the forum, but this is an attempt to put the whole story in one place.

In 1974 my parents bought a 504 Diesel (azure blue). That was my Father's daily driver (I would have been 21 years old at the time). I remember lobbying for that car vs the Volkswagen Diesel (fox?) they were also considering. In 1976 my father fell asleep at the wheel (damn those comfy Peugeot seats) and totaled his car. The insurance company didn't have any resale history on the car yet and was having a hard time setting a value. They called him up and said they found a Peugeot Diesel, of the same year and similar mileage, for sale a few hundred miles away, and if he wanted it, he could pay the deductible, and they would pay the rest. So he then had a maroon one instead of the blue one. In 1978 they bought another 504 Diesel, which became my Mother's daily driver. It was a metallic gold color. In 1982 they traded in the 74 maroon 504 and got a White 505 Diesel. It was a base model, 4sp no sunroof, manual widows and mirrors. In 1985 they traded in the 78 504 on the Glacier Blue 505S TD which became my mother's DD. In 1990 they bought a 405 on a European delivery program, where they bought it through a local dealer in NJ but picked it up in France. They spent 3 or 4 weeks traveling around Europe with it and then returned it to a port city for shipment to the US. This was a US model with a European exhaust system, headlights and a few other European parts. Peugeot then replaced the non US parts and put it on a boat to the US. My parents picked it up at the Dealer they originally bought it from. My recollection was that there was little or no extra charge for this arrangement. They were not offered much trade in value for the white 505 so I bought it from them for whatever the dealer was offering them, and had it till 1995 when the transmission went, and I junked it. My wife was driving it for a while, but she really hated driving a stick shift, so we bought a new Honda for her, which I have to say gave us 250,000 absolutely trouble free miles. In 1993 when Peugeot announced they were going home, my Mother got a new 405 that the dealer considered to be kind of an orphan. I forget what she paid, but I think it was less than half the sticker price. That was the first automatic transmission I remember in any car in our family, but there was no choice in the matter. It was whatever the dealer had in stock. I bought her 505 at that time, and it is my car today. In 1995 my parents retired to New Hampshire with their two 405s and were told there were no Peugeot dealers within 100 miles. I don't think that was true, but they had some difficulty finding any place with Peugeot experience to service them. In 2000 my father traded in his 1990 405 and bought a new Subaru Legacy. About 10 years ago my mother was in her 405 on her way to play tennis, when she was T-boned by a teenager in a pickup truck. The car was totaled and she nearly was too. While she was in the hospital, I went with my father to get their belongings from the car, and approaching the car was really shocking. It didn't look like anyone could have survived it. But on closer inspection, the passenger compartment was completely intact. Every crush zone that was meant to crush was completely crushed but the part that wasn't supposed to crush, protected the occupant perfectly. So between that and the 1974 504 that my father totaled, I've had both my parents survive potentially fatal accidents, protected by their Peugeots. By that time my father had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was near the end of his driving days, so they decided not to replace the Peugeot and just keep the Subaru. In December of 2011 my father passed away, just shy of his 90th birthday.

In late summer 2012, I drove into a flooded street, sucked water into the air intake and hydrolocked the engine on the 1985 505. Removal of the injectors did not release the lock. I still don’t know exactly what bent, but even with the head off, the crank will not budge. Reading my distress call, Joe (JunktionFET) offered to sell me his 505STI, for use as an engine donor. Once I determined that my engine was not going to be reasonably repairable, I took him up on his offer, and in mid September, I took the bus down to Raleigh NC and drove his car back to New Jersey. Interestingly his car was originally from NJ, about 50 miles from me. The original plan was to immediately swap engines but, once I got back, I decided to drive Joe’s car for the winter and let its already rusty body take the road salt.

About a month after I got the car from Joe, we found ourselves ground zero for Hurricane Sandy. I pushed the engineless one to the highest ground I could get it to and we left the Honda in a parking lot on high ground where several thousand other vehicles took refuge. My wife, our cat and I evacuated, in the 505 I got from Joe. The water came just about up to the bottom of the doors on the 505 left behind but, other than damp carpeting, it made out OK. In the summer of 2013, I had the engines swapped by a local shop that seems to do mostly heavy equipment, and the car that my mother originally bought in 1985 went back to being my daily driver. Unfortunately it is difficult to get to the larger projects on a car when it is your daily transportation, and while the car is in good mechanical condition, it badly needs paint. I have a crack in the windshield. I will soon need to reseal the injector pump, and there are of course no end of little projects I keep meaning to get to. Last week my mother, who is approaching 91 years old, called and told me she has decided to give up driving, and would like to give me her car, if I would like it. Her 2000 Subaru has a little under 34,000 miles on it. While it has spent it’s life so far in New Hampshire, which is not known for mild winters, it has always been garaged and while I have not inspected it all that carefully yet, I don’t recall noticing any signs of rust. So just in time for it’s 30^th birthday, I plan to retire the Peugeot from daily driver duty, and concentrate on restoring it to it’s former glory.

[Martin Fry]

very good narrative! thanks for taking time and posting up!