City car available in both saloon and coupe versions, the Peugeot 104 was also designed as a station wagon and three-box version. Two silhouettes remained at the prototype stage which should logically have taken over from the bodies of the same type of the 204.
Produced from 1972 to 1988, the Peugeot 104 celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The little lioness was available as a sedan, 3.58 m long, as well as a coupe, even more compact, with a format of 3.30 m. The first was born with a tailgate under its fixed rear window, the second benefited, from its inception, from a tailgate. A fifth door that the saloon only adopted during the 1976 vintage because this opening, a guarantee of optimal modularity, then became essential. All the city cars on the market then generalized it.
A weapon that its “great” rival, the Renault 5, also celebrating its half-century in 2022, did not need to adopt during its career, it offered it from the start. However, the Sochaux engineers and designers did not limit their imagination to the two “official” silhouettes of the 104. Undoubtedly focused on the continuity of the offer, they also imagined a station wagon variant as well as a three-box body with an added boot trunk linked to the 204 range.
TO READ. Peugeot e-104. Here is the virtual rival of the Renault 5 Prototype!
The unknown ancestor of the 206 SW
In effect, this Peugeot 104 station wagon would have been the logical heir to the eponymous Peugeot 204. But market studies have decided otherwise, at the time, customers did not feel the need to afford such a small “utility”. Note that to achieve serious savings, the stern of the Peugeot 104 break took over, the lights of the Peugeot 504 break which were necessarily disproportionate.
Model | Year | Production |
204 station wagon | 1965 – 1976 | 485,336 |
206SW | 2001 – 2012 | 411 370 |
207SW | 2006 – 2013 | 305 136 |
It was only thirty years later that the recipe was brought up to date and finally crossed the threshold of industrialization in the form of the Peugeot 206 SW. The latter was followed by the Peugeot 207 SW before the Peugeot 2008 SUV reshuffled the cards and precipitated the disappearance of the species. Yet in the 1980s, in his corner, the Italian Pininfarina thought up a break variant of the 205, it was called Peugeot 205 Verve. The manufacturer did not want it, he preferred to market two utility van versions, the Peugeot 205 F and Peugeot 205 Multi.
TO READ. Peugeot. The station wagon saga from 1939 to the present day
The anti Renault Siete?
Concerning the Peugeot 104 notchback, the affiliation with the Peugeot 204 sedan is even more obvious. The proposal for a traditional statutory saloon at the bottom of the range remained unavoidable on certain markets in southern Europe, evidenced in particular in the competition, the Renault Siete. This notchback variant of the Renault 5 dedicated to the Iberian Peninsula offered a rather unsightly silhouette, because the car was not initially designed with such a rear appendage. This type of silhouette nevertheless has the merit of offering a larger trunk volume.
The atypical Peugeot 104 notchbacks and therefore remained as prototypes. They were exhibited in 2009 at the Musée de l’Aventure Peugeot in Sochaux (25) during an event highlighting all the proposals that never made it to industrialization. Also shown on this occasion were the Peugeot 505 coupés and convertibles produced in 1982, which were to seduce America while taking up the torch from the 504s of the same type.
TO READ. Peugeot. The saga of city cars from 1972 to the present day