#peugeot

The Rare Rides series will always have space for unique French cars. It’s featured several Renault vehicles and a couple of Citroëns to date, but only one Peugeot, to my recollection. That one, a 106 GTI, was an import to Canada by an enthusiastic second-hand buyer. Today we feature a second Peugeot: one actually sold by a dealer, brand new, in America.

It’s the hottest 405 sold in the U.S. — the excellently named Mi16.

PSA Group has a North American headquarters in Atlanta and it wants to use it. The French automaker also has a reentry plan that’s already underway. By the middle of the coming decade, we could all be behind the wheel of a French car (presumably after trading our Dodge Grand Caravans for the Citroën SpaceTourer Rip Curl).

Well, that might not happen — not if the U.S. imposes tariffs on the European Union, anyway. PSA North America Larry Dominique seems pretty worried that President Trump’s eagerness for tariffs could kibosh the company’s return, leaving mournful American francophiles gazing lustily over the Canadian border as PSA goes wild in Quebec.

Assuming PSA Group‘s plan to re-enter the U.S. market isn’t thwarted by an all-out tariff war, you can expect to see Peugeots or Citroëns plying the roadways of America by the middle of next decade. Maybe it’ll be sooner than that.

Whenever they arrive, the vehicles will boast four-cylinder engines designed in Germany by Opel, a former General Motors division whose parent decided to put it up for adoption.

Since acquiring Opel and Vauxhall from General Motors, France’s PSA Group has dropped not-so-subtle hints that it wants back into the American market. Chief executive Carlos Tavares said the group is already engineering upcoming models to meet U.S. regulations. “That means that from three years down the road we’ll be able to push the button, if we decide to do so, in terms of product compliance vis-a-vis the U.S. regulations,” he explained during the Frankfurt Auto Show.

That means Citroën and Peugeot should have a few vehicles ready for export after 2020. However, selling them won’t be a piece of cake. PSA doesn’t have an established dealer network in the United States, nor does it have a corporate friend in the industry that might allow the company to borrow one.

Still, the European auto group doesn’t seem all that worried. Rather than worry about asking its automotive neighbors to loan it a cup of sweet dealership sugar, it noticed a lot of people prefer aspartame and acesulfame potassium. PSA plans to take a modern, tech-focused, affordable approach to the problem.

The threat of new import tariffs has PSA Group worried about its plan to return to the United States. Following President Trump’s proposal to levy a 25-percent tax on steel imports and a 10-percent tariff on inbound aluminum, Europe balked at the suggestion, leading to further threats of a car tariff.

Right now, the U.S. levies a 2.5-percent tax on imported European vehicles, far less than Europe’s 10-percent tariff on vehicle travelling eastward across the Atlantic. There’s a 25-percent U.S. tariff on European vans and trucks, too, which explains why crates of Mercedes-Benz van components sail into the port of Charleston, South Carolina at regular intervals.

According to Trump, any European retaliation against the proposed metal tariffs — which seem all the more likely given yesterday’s resignation of the president’s pro-free trade economic advisor, Gary Cohn — would see the U.S. ratchet up its car tariff. If the scenario comes to pass, your dreams of one day buying a new French car in America could easily be dashed.

(TTAC Hot Takes are video roundup posts which will occur whenever we can get Michael Accardi into hair and makeup. These posts are a mandate of our VerticalScope overlords, who are fascinated with the new video medium of YouTube. Watch our other videos here.)

This week, Michael summarizes all the best news bits from January 17th through the 24th, and we highlight some Premium Selects from the B&B comments section.

It’s likely the vanguard of the invasion force is already on Georgia soil, probably after landing at Hartsfield-Jackson following a nice Air France flight from Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle. Don’t be scared, though. These people are delivering choice to new car buyers, at least once their plan is fully underway.

Groupe PSA, maker of Peugeot, Citroën, and DS vehicles, announced Tuesday that Atlanta will become home to its new North American headquarters. It’s an early but crucial step in the company’s decade-long plan to return to the American automotive scene.

At Wednesday’s Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, Peugeot SA Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said the French automaker is picking the brains of former Opel engineers to develop vehicles for re-entry into U.S. market. In keeping with current trends, he also said Peugeot will offer electrification as an option on all its vehicles by 2025.

With plans to use the 2017 acquisition of GM’s European Opel and Vauxhall operations as the springboard for global expansion, Americans could eventually find themselves once again experiencing the Gallic delights of French motoring.

As we all know, our neighbors to the north keep things warm and tropical. Additionally, they have less government, and fewer regulations. This lack of regulation is what makes today’s Peugeot possible.

It’s a very tidy 106 GTI, from 1997.

The car you see here is quite possibly the most important vehicle to ever come out of France. Pioneering no less than three major advances in automotive technology, it would effectively set the stage for passenger cars of the future — continuing to this day.

It’s a 1955 Citroën Traction Avant, and its importance cannot be overstated.

For some, including TTAC’s in-house Francophile, Chris Tonn, the wait is simply unbearable. PSA Group, maker of Citroën, Peugeot and DS cars, plans to re-enter a market it hasn’t done business in since the last Peugeot left a U.S. dealer in 1991.It’s a slow and steady comeback for the French automaker. Steamlined, flush with products, and no longer the fiscal basket case it was earlier in the decade, PSA plans to conquer untapped and underperforming markets, including the United States. The American arrival comes by way of an extremely cautious 10-year plan. While the automaker remains hesitant to show its cards, it now admits that, if the buying public is willing, it can have cars ready for U.S. purchase in three years.

The DeLorean DMC-12 is forever linked to the classic film Back to the Future, where the stainless steel wonder was converted into a conveyance for the purposes of time travel. But the silver screen was not the only place the DMC-12 underwent a transformation. A certain credit card company had a PR stunt in mind that saw the DeLorean plated with 24-carat gold.

Our Rare Ride today is what happens when a private owner attempts the same thing.

The long-awaited return of PSA Group — French builder of Citroën, Peugeot, and DS cars — to the U.S. marketplace was never going to be a quick operation. Americans weren’t going to suddenly wake up one morning to see neighbors Bob and Carol bundling the kids into in their brand-new Berlingo Multispace. Their other neighbors, Ted and Alice, wouldn’t suddenly arrive home in their Spacetourer and C-Elysee, jockeying for the parking space closest to the door.

The C4 Cactus, with its quirky Airbump inserts and 1.2-liter three-cylinder, won’t begin appearing in Walgreen lots overnight.

For PSA, returning to the U.S. is akin to a kid standing next to a cold pool, dipping one toe in first, then the foot, followed by the lower leg. To dive in without a plan would be to risk disaster. Having already established that first toehold (which you’d be forgiven for not noticing), the harder stuff awaits, and PSA remains cagey as to when we’ll all be driving around in Citroëns. It just knows it can’t screw it up.

Today’s Rare Ride was inspired directly by this comment on the Question of the Day, where I asked which car brand you’d bring back from the dead if given the chance. Commenter Menlo suggested the oft-forgotten Talbot, and specifically a unique vehicle they used to make.

Now we can all learn about the Matra Rancho.

When you’re hot, you’re hot. And when you’re the architect of a leasing promotion gone bad (by way of being too successful), you’re fired.

PSA Group reportedly canned its top German managers after a scorching lease deal on Peugeot 208 hatchbacks sent the country’s residents clamoring for wildly discounted French cars.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way.