Peugeot 205 Turbo T16 could sell at auction for around £300,000

Описание: If you told someone you were about to splash £300,000 on a Peugeot, they'd probably think you'd lost the plot.

But that could be the case in a matter of weeks when one of the rarest – and greatest – models ever produced by the French manufacturer goes under the hammer at auction in Britain.

The eighties hot hatch model in question has an estimated guide price of £235,000 to £275,000 as it heads to Warwickshire to one of the biggest collectible car sales of 2024. Here's why...

The 1985 Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 being offered to the highest bidder is like nothing else to have ever adorned the Parisian firm's prancing lion badge.

Just 200 'homologation specials' were made in the mid-eighties. There are road-going versions of the rally competition cars Peugeot entered to the most fearsome period of the sport – the Group B era.

On the tarmac, sands, gravel, snow and ice, the 205 Turbo T16 racer would prove hugely successful, claiming back-to-back World Rally Championship (WRC) titles in 1985 and 1986 with respective Finnish drivers Timo Salonen and Juha Kankkunen at the wheel.

This means that not only are the 200 road cars incredibly rare but they're astronomically fast and crammed with so much racing heritage that some are now reserved for museums and the manufacturer's heritage haul.
This stunning car is number 176 of the 200 road-going 205 Turbo 16 constructed that remains in private - UK - ownership today.

Importantly for buyers in the British Isles, this one is fully UK registered and has covered fewer than 10,000 miles from new.

While the Turbo 16 hot hatch shares its nameplate with Peugeot's mass-produced 205 city car, this is just about where the similarities end.

The only components the Turbo 16 shares with the standard 205 is the windscreen, doors and headlamps. That's it!

The fact that it was shaped and named to be a 205 member was purely to promote the sales of the mass-production car through victories on the rally stage.

Mechanically, this is an entirely different beast, notably with its tuned and turbocharged petrol engine mounted not in the front but the middle of the car, and power sent to all four wheels.

Official Peugeot history files say that all 200 of the road cars made were to the exact same specification: and all were produced in left-hand drive and were painted Winchester Grey, just like this one.

However, a handful of them were painted in Pearl White, with four reserved for Jean Boillot (then President of Peugeot) and three French motorsport icons: F1 driver Didier Pironi, engineer André de Cortanze and director of the Peugeot Talbot Sport WRC team (and later Scuderia Ferrari F1 boss and FIA President) Jean Todt.

Visually, the T16 can be easily distinguished from any conventional 205 and the iconic 205 GTi hot hatch.

The enormous wheel arches – a requirement to house the extended rear track (distance between the two back wheels) and bigger tyres – and the huge air scoops located behind its doors and rear quarter windows are the big giveaway.

The front half of the chassis, including the passenger cell, was a dedicated steel monocoque, whilst the rear half was a tubular steel spaceframe structure for mounting the powertrain and suspensions.

Power comes from a 1.8-litre turbocharged petrol engine. It's a significantly de-tuned version of the one used in the competition cars, with the examples with number plates and tax discs [back in the day] producing peak power of 197bhp.

While that doesn't sound much by today's standards, in 1985 that was an electrifying amount of grunt for a tiny car that tipped the scales at just 907kg.

When new, the T16's speedometer could tick round to 60mph in just 6.6 seconds. Foot pinned to the floor, the brutish little Peugeot could continue accelerating to a top speed of 137mph.

The latter was used to cool the powerful mid-mounted engine and a large air-to-air intercooler.
A Porsche specialist entrusted with the work fitted a new clutch during this nut-and-bolt service. Today, the little Pug is ready to be driven.

The auction house says the paint 'looks to be original', as does the two-tone grey cloth and leather bolstered seats with red detailing.

Its wonderful condition is testament to the fact the odometer shows the car covering just 16,081 kilometres – 9,992 miles – from new.

Originally, the Peugeot 205 T16 Turbos were sold for 290,000 French Francs, which was around £25,000 at the time when converting to British pounds.

That means its higher estimate of £275,000 is some 11 times its price when new.

Yet this won't make it the most expensive of the 200 Turbo T16 road cars sold.

One of the handful of white cars – number 33 – holds that record.

French auction house Aguttes sold this example in March 2021 for believed the be an existing record of €419,260 (almost £360,000).

Yet, this figure is nothing compared to the value of the surviving race cars.