CarBrandLogos archive · Peugeot · 1929

Peugeot201

The cheap saloon that carried Peugeot through the Depression, and named every car since.

The story

A defining chapter in Peugeot history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Peugeot 201, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The 201 was shown at the 1929 Paris Salon, weeks before the Wall Street crash, and it was designed for exactly the conditions that followed. It was small, cheap to build at Sochaux, and simple: a four-door saloon body over a front-engine, rear-drive chassis with a four-cylinder engine that grew from 1085 cc to 1465 cc across its life. Other bodies were available for buyers who wanted them.

Peugeot 201 · Arnaud 25 · Public domain

Design and engineering

Two things make it matter. The first is commercial. The Depression destroyed a large part of the French motor industry, and several established names did not survive it. Peugeot did, largely because the 201 was the right car at the moment when buyers stopped being able to afford anything larger. It stayed in production until 1937, by which time 142,309 had been built.

Peugeot 201 · Arnaud 25 · Public domain

In production

The second is the name. Peugeot used three digits with a zero in the middle, the hole being where the starting handle passed through the bodywork, and then kept the convention for everything that followed. That zero later became a legal matter: Peugeot registered its claim to the pattern, which is why Porsche's 901 had to become the 911. Every Peugeot from the 202 to the 208 traces its badge back to this car.

Peugeot 201 · Charles01 · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance