“As we seek to establish a more premium image, it is clear there are more and more opportunities for projects that add halo cars to ranges, including the addition of fast cars in the range,” explained Xavier Peugeot, the automaker’s head of product, in an interview with British magazine Autocar.
Peugeot has an illustrious, decades-long racing heritage and it was one of the major players in the hot hatch war that raged across Europe over the course of the 1980s. The company gradually stopped building performance cars in the 1990s, but it returned to the segment recently with the 208 GTi and the RCZ R. Strong sales of both models have encouraged the company’s top brass to invest in horsepower.
One of the performance-focused models rumored to be in the pipelines is a production version of the 308 R Concept that was introduced last September at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Presented as merely a design study, the 308 R packed a 1.6-liter four-cylinder THP mill developed jointly by BMW and PSA that was tuned to make 270 horsepower at 6,000 rpms and 243 lb-ft. of torque at 1,900 rpms.
Other performance-focused models are expected to include a hardcore version of the 2008 crossover inspired by the 2008 DKR that will make its racing debut next January.
The production version of the 308 R could bow as soon as next October’s Paris Motor Show. Other models will follow over the coming year.
Leave a Reply