1993 Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9: Non, je ne m'allumerai pas!

Many years ago, I had a French girlfriend. She was beautiful, passionate, sexy, elegant, and completely insane.

Period correct French Femme Laetitia Casta - for illustration

Arguments during the end stage of the relationship would oscillate between tenderness and hate, kisses and slaps, demands to leave, followed by pleas for love.

It was infuriating… and enthralling. Yet, it was perfectly in keeping with the many exciting and wonderful—if sometimes frustrating—aspects that make up the French personality.

My prior experience of amour a la française was not with a woman—ehem—-but with my 1993 Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9, which incredibly enough, did an excellent job of preparing me for what was to come, for the Peugeot was as sexy, temperamental, enticing, fun and unsettling as she—the girlfriend that is—would be, many years later.

Is it possible that our machines are so endowed with our personality that they become recognizable? I think so, for machines are made by humans and designed, directly or indirectly, to represent a particular culture from a specific moment in time, with all its wonders and idiosyncrasies. And the wonderful Peugeot is certainly a prime representative of France.

My French Femme - circa 1995

She—the Peugeot—wore red exterior paint, adorned with a black and red plastic cladding that went around the car’s lower waistline, like a slim belt worn in the nude. The interior was black and red woven cloth with black leatherette bolsters. It was hot in a completely francophone way, which made it even hotter.

Her 1.9 litter XU9-JA/K engine—what an incredibly unsexy name for its sexy heart—was full of low-end torque and was perfectly matched by a well-tuned chassis and outstanding disc brakes.

Dynamically, it felt as direct as one can ever want a machine to be, yet as the French are known to do well, it was extremely comfortable and beautifully understated. I had one of the best driving positions ever conceived, with a completely unobstructed view, front, back, and to the sides, courtesy of its generous greenhouse, which is only potentially bested by a Land Rover 88 Series II… with its entire top removed… and its windshield down… or whatver that glass thing is!

Best outward visibility, but the 205 was a close 2nd

Many of today’s designers should sit in a 205 GTI 1.9, and then return to one of their newly designed sarcophagi-on-wheels, and then answer the question of why visibility is somehow not relevant anymore.

But just as the Peugeot was beautiful, sexy, passionate, and fast, my example was also as melodramatic as Catherine Deneuve in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. This, of course, made her—Katherine and the Peugeot—plus irrésistible. Alas, just as Katherine did with Nino Castelnouvo, the Peugeot quickly forgot your name when she wanted to.

The melodrama here involved the 205 shutting off in the middle of traffic and then refusing to start for… well, for as long as it damn well wanted, which could be four, six, eight minutes… time enough to light up and smoke a cigarette, or two.

Quite simply, you could plead all you wanted, but its response was always a whisper-soft, post-cigarette-smoke-exhalation “…No…” capped by a rolling of the eyes and a turn of the neck and the shoulder.

“No!”

Back when I was in my early twenties, I was as fascinated as I was confused about the inner workings of an internal combustion engine and the inner workings of… women, and when one of these episodes came about—with the Peugeot that is—after my pleading went nowhere, all I could do was stand there paralyzed, head looking down and incapable of doing anything.

What I was never in the mood for was to follow the advice the father of a friend gave me, which was that I should “…not try to understand them, you just need to love them”.

"Quoi!”

Women, that is.

No, dammit, I disagreed vehemently.

I thought this made women into some enigmatic “alien” whose moments of anger, warranted or not, were insultingly termed “hysterics”, and should therefore be dismissed, and any logic to their emotions was to be ignored.

I would not have any part in this way of thinking, ever! I also saw this as a surrender for I truly, sincerely, wanted to understand women… and I wanted to understand cars… but especially women, though.

And I still do…yet… I see his point now with different eyes, or at least what he somewhat ineloquently meant.  

Now, please let me explain what I mean before I am forced to don a fire-proof suit in fear of being torched by the entire internet, and be forced to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt—although there is nothing reasonable on the internet—my non-male-chauvinist, pro-feminist credentials.

Maybe, as with women, the Peugeot did not want me to keep asking her-

“You are a stupid, stupid man… I hate you.”- she said, as she prepared to go out… with me.

Michel - “What is wrong?”

Her - “Rien…”

Michel - “Are you ok?”

She pushes me aside to continue dressing.

Michel - “Did I do something wrong?”

Her - “ahg.. putain…”

Michel - “Oh, is it that time of the month?”

She turns, and with uncanny speed, fires two French-made Exocet missles with her eyes, hitting my crotch with precision.

Yes… there are all questions that, with time, as you grow from a moron into a man, you realize are not only, as she said, stupid and incorrect, but have precipitated a possible CLE = a castration-level event.

Today, in hindsight, and with maturity in sight, I think she simply wanted to be held, loved, and understood.

Oh, what the hell am I saying?

The damn car wouldn’t start. It did not need a talking to, understanding, silence, a hug, or to be ravaged in bed… It needed a mechanic. 

And a French one! Merde!

These guys, but French.

A few visits with older men—ehem—mechanics, this time at a Peugeot dealership’s shop, provided little relief as they did many things to her that I will never know (the horror) and since the “episodes” were unpredictable, she, of course, was fine when picked up, but then at the perfect moment, a week or a month later, the drama would return. Lucky Strike… strike me down, now, please.

Nevertheless, freakish as these incidents were, they never took anything away from the sheer wonder of owning a 205 GTI 1.9. It ate up roads at illegal speeds in such comfort and with such aplomb as to make her one of the few cars I would buy back in an instant if given a chance. Yes, one felt like a Francophone James Bond when attacking the roads with this fine weapon.

Of course, it has been what, twenty-eight years since I sold her…dear me, almost three decades. Hold on. Let me think about this a bit.

What would she be like today? What am I like today? What would I think of her now, after having so many others in my life after her? What would she think of me? Would she still be as special and unique as she felt during my youth? Or am I looking at her with rosé-tinted glasses?

Well, monsieur …pass the Rosé, please, I don’t care.

Mon amour…

Maybe the past is best left in the past, with the vail of time shrouding in mystery those moments you cherish, and even reframing those that you disliked, such as transforming the sheer annoyance of standing in the rain while enigmatically looking at an engine as other cars passed by cursing your name into a romantically poetic moment.

Regardless, I have always had the sensation that the Peugeot tried its best to prepare me for what was to come, maybe even warn me before she—the actual French woman—came along.

But as with all things related to love, lust, and desire, passion will always blind you, and no matter how many warnings you are given, a bohemian will always choose to risk it all, pour l’ amour. Otherwise, tell me, dear reader, then why should I exist?

I’ll let Joe Dassin answer that question.