Peugeot’s design team, led by Matthias Hossann, was keen to pay tribute to the first Peugeot concept car, created in 1984, 40 years ago. We’re taking advantage of this virtual creation (above) to take a look back at a concept car that almost never saw the light of day, but which in the end was a real trigger for Gérard Welter’s team, then in charge of Peugeot design. A team that until then had been under the yoke of the privileged consultant, Pininfarina.
At Peugeot, to find concept cars, you had to knock on the door of preferred consultant Pininfarina. In 1971, the coachbuilder designed the 504 Riviera hunting estate, but at the time Peugeot had no ‘showroom prototype’. Until the design team led by Gérard Welter finally won its duel with the Italians on the M24 project for the 205, below.
This victory, even if it wasn’t the first (the 305 is proof of that), had a symbolic value because the 205 arrived at just the right moment to save the group, no less. It was as if the pressure cooker that had been opened with the M24 project had exploded, sparking off the wildest of projects. In the wake of the 205’s commercial launch, Jean Todt, the newly-appointed director of Peugeot Talbot Sport, persuaded Jean Boillot, who had been placed in charge of the marque by Jacques Calvet in 1984, to launch the production car simultaneously in 1983 and the sports version with a mid-engined rear axle, the very famous 205 Turbo 16 below.
It was a stroke of genius that obviously tickled the fancy of Gérard Welter, who had been competing since 1976 with his privateer WMs in the Le Mans 24 Hours. With the engine from the Turbo 16, Welter wanted to design a car that was the complete opposite of the 205 Turbo 16: a coupé that was light years ahead of Peugeot’s small saloon. The concept car idea was born. It would be the first of a series of three show cars (1984, 1986 and 1988) before a six-year break.
The Quasar is unveiled at a flamboyant Paris Motor Show. As visitors entered Hall 1 of the Parc des Expositions at Porte de Versailles, they saw a huge balloon representing the new Renault Supercinq floating in the air, the culmination of years of research into a replacement for the R5. Peugeot, however, beat the Régie to the punch with its brilliant 1983 205, which was flying high on the brand’s stand alongside the Quasar. From the little Peugeot, the concept borrows the theme of the three-bar grille, which is narrower, and the rear lights.
Everything else is new, apart from the powertrain of the 205 Turbo 16, which won Peugeot the World Rally Championship in 1984 and 1985. But Gérard Welter is not just a staff designer, he is also a keen competition and architecture enthusiast. While the engine is indeed that of the 205 Turbo 16, Welter points out that “we fitted it with a special intake, dedicated exhausts and the mechanics are load-bearing, which is not the case with the 205 Turbo 16. The whole team put its heart into it, and it’s true that at the time, we didn’t really have a clear policy in terms of presenting concept cars.“
After the terrible pressure that designers were put under during the development of the 205 programme, “we needed the kind of notoriety that can only be built up through concept cars. For Quasar, it all started with a small drawing by Éric Berthet, who, like me, came from the Gué school in Tresmes. His drawing shows a car with its guts in the air! ” A theme that will be one of the innovations of this exceptional machine. And yet the concept came very close to not being in Paris.
First of all, the Quasar was assembled on the Saturday before the show. Paul Bracq recalls that “it was finished by Saturday lunchtime. It left on the Sunday for press photos in a studio, and by Tuesday morning it was at the show!” “Secondly, when the show prototype was being assembled, Jean Boillot feared that the presentation of this ‘205 Turbo 16 concept’ would weaken the commercial launch of the series of 200 Turbo 16s needed to homologate the rally car. Gérard Welter immediately organised a meeting with the Peugeot boss and the two cars, to highlight the many differences between them.
With Boillot reassured, the project can continue its development. If the exterior style was not lacking in panache, the interior style created by the designers in Paul Bracq’s team was not to be outdone. The 1980s saw the development of the computer. Apple launched its Macintosh four years ago, and electronics made a sensational breakthrough in the automotive world. The Renault 11 ‘Electronic’ was the first French car with digital instrumentation, followed by the Citroën BX Digit in 1985, while voice synthesis made its (laborious) appearance on the Renault 25 of 1984.
The Quasar couldn’t ignore this trend, as Paul Bracq pointed out at the time: “We integrated electronic instrumentation to provide maximum information. And we did this without cluttering up the passenger side. The screen, for example, gives complete control of the vehicle and displays the electronic remote control with programmed itineraries or city maps. We also wanted a rear-view camera, but the equipment available from suppliers was too bulky.”
The Japanese company Clarion was commissioned to develop the Quasar’s electronics. The dashboard is not really a dashboard, since it is monolithic. It does not rest on the windscreen opening, but on a central foot located directly on the console. Paul Bracq explains that this solution allows better ventilation of the cabin, which is encapsulated in a real glass bubble. The Quasar is the real sensation of the show. Who would have imagined Peugeot capable of launching such a project at the time? The range then consisted of the 205, which housed the two-door silhouette and the GTI.
As for the rest, the 104 is still with us, the 305 has entered the second half of its life, while at the top end of the range, the 505 is at the peak of its career. The 604, on the other hand, is just getting by… As the presentation pack for the Quasar concept car concludes, “in this mosaic of the imagination, dreams and reality are yours.” A few months after the Paris show, the 309 was unveiled, but the future 405 and 605 were already being refined. “For Peugeot, for the La Garenne research centre and for design, Quasar is a fabulous calling card,” said Paul Bracq on the Peugeot stand in 1984.
