Despite the derivative name and use of Peugeot mechanicals, the Peugette concept car was not a Peugeot factory effort. It was actually a 1976 Pininfarina design study built on “spec,” with hopes of generating a desire for production from Peugeot (with whom Pininfarina had a good relationship with at the time).
The base platform for the Peugette was the Peugeot 104ZS hatchback: pretty ordinary stuff for a concept car. Even more unusual for Pininfarina, the Peugette was designed with manufacturing efficiency as a top priority. The idea was that the Peugette would be a stylish, satisfying car accessible to European youth whose motoring dreams outstripped their economic resources. It was a “lifestyle vehicle” before that horrible marketing phrase came into being.

The 66 HP Peugeot 104 was an economical subcompact, but certainly not a bad car (by early-’70s European standards). Upon its introduction in 1972, reviewers praised its steering feel, ride, and slick-shifting gearbox. It sold well and remained popular well into the ’80s. For a utilitarian hatchback, the three-door ZS version had reasonably legit sporting pretensions.
The Peugette’s remarkable (perhaps even bizarre) appearance was a result of its dual mission to be both dramatic and cheap. The body panels are all symmetrical, left to right and front to back. Thus, the front and rear hood and fenders are interchangeable, as are the doors. Same was true of the dashboard’s modular instrument “pods.” This was intended to cut down on the parts that needed to be developed and manufactured for initial assembly, as well as stocked at dealers for collision repairs.
Light weight, low power cars don’t tax their underpinnings as much as larger, more aggressive vehicles do, and therefore don’t need extremely sophisticated chassis components to shine. The Peugette did receive some strategic chassis bracing — most notably, a roll bar made from thick flat stock with an accompanying lower crossbeam welded in behind the cockpit. This reportedly only made up for the Peugette’s loss of body rigidity, bringing it back into the acceptable range while adding some rollover protection, rather than noticeably increasing stiffness over a stock-bodied 104ZS. Thanks to the Peugette’s wider rims and tires and less weight than the 104ZS, contemporary road tests said the Peugette was wicked fun to drive in urban situations and tight backroads where its meager power output didn’t spoil the party.
Unfortunately, those road tests didn’t generate much more that passing interest from the motoring public after the Peugette’s 1976 unveiling. So Pininfarina revamped the project a year later, and showed it again with the addition of a Barchetta version that replaced the full windshield with a passenger-side hard tonneau and a small racing windscreen that wrapped around the monoposto driver’s seat.

The Peugette was ultimately a bit of fancy, an oxymoron. It was a deliberately cheap car for people who could afford to indulge themselves. It was a racy car with a 66 HP engine. It was a utilitarian subcompact that had been transformed into a 2-seat convertible with a very rudimentary canvas top and side curtains, somewhat awkward ingress and egress, and much reduced cargo capacity. Despite some interest, Peugeot eventually decided that selling an utterly impractical car to people who had no money was not a great marketing strategy. The couple of Peugettes built found their way into European car museums where they remain today.
Okay, I’ll admit it: there is absolutely no rational reason for me to be so utterly entranced by the Peugette. None. It wasn’t terribly influential, wasn’t a radically superior performer, and certainly wasn’t pretty by any conventional definition of the word. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am entranced, and have been for years. It’s been one of my all-time favorite cars ever since I first read about it in Cars magazine as a kid. That’s why writing this appreciation has been one of my ambitions the whole time I have been at Hooniverse. I’ve kept putting it off due to my fear that I won’t do it justice, that I won’t manage to convey why my infatuation is justified. But allowing many Hooniverse readers — perhaps the majority — to never learn of this fairly obscure footnote in automotive history would be the greater injustice.
[Image sources: traumautoarchiv.de, carstyling.ru, beepworld.de, flickr.com]