CarBrandLogos archive · Peugeot · 1983
The supermini that rescued a company and then went rallying.
Discover the storyPhoto: Rudolf Stricker · CC BY-SA 3.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Peugeot 205, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
By the early 1980s Peugeot was in serious trouble. It had absorbed Citroen and then bought Chrysler's European operations, inheriting the Talbot brand along with enormous losses, and the group was haemorrhaging money. The 205, launched in 1983, had to work. It did, comprehensively, and inside the company it is still referred to as the car that saved Peugeot.
1990s Peugeot 205 XAD rear · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0
02
Gerard Welter led the exterior design, and the proportions were the achievement: a taut three or five-door hatchback with slim pillars, a low waist and a lightness of line that made rivals look heavy almost immediately. Pininfarina handled the later cabriolet. Mechanically it was conventional, with a front-mounted engine driving the front wheels through four or five-speed gearboxes, petrol units from 954 cc upwards and a diesel that became notorious for economy. It replaced the 104 and the Talbot Samba, and was built at Mulhouse and in Spain, Chile and Taiwan among others.
1993 Peugeot 205 Si 3-door hatchback · Jeremy from Sydney, Australia · CC BY 2.0
03
Two versions gave it a second life. The GTI, with a fuel-injected 1.6 and later a 1.9, was quick, unusually light and famously willing to lift a rear wheel and change direction with it, which made it either the best hot hatch of its decade or the most alarming, depending on who was driving. And the 205 T16, which shared nothing with a showroom car but its silhouette, put a turbocharged mid-mounted engine and four-wheel drive under a lookalike body to contest Group B rallying. Peugeot took the world championship in 1985 and 1986, then took a long-travel version of the same car to the Dakar and won there too.
1990 Peugeot 205 CTi 1.9 katalysator, front left · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0
04
Production ran until 1999, overlapping both the 106 and the 206. The road cars were replaced, but the reputation was not: the 205 remains the benchmark against which Peugeot's own small cars are still measured, usually unfavourably.
At a glance
Produced
1983–1999Engine
Petrol engineDesigner
Gerard WelterBody
3/5-door hatchbackTechnical specification
Badge at launch
This is the marque emblem that accompanied the 205's era. The full identity timeline is documented in the brand archive.
Explore the logo history →From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1980s
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