Those two clips alone were my gateway drug. God, look at that one handed action when he uses his right hand as a sun visor. My dad had a blue 405 when I was getting into cars and boy did I cut a lot of cardboard to make that car look like Vatanen's Pikes peak monster.
Gone was also the best dancing video on TikTok - Ari Vatanen's masterful hill climb somewhere in Colorado, just look and listen. Just look at the Pirelli P7000s screach under the sound dubbing of the world famous 4 06 Taxi from Marseille. There was nothing Peugeot had to beat the proverbial Germans and it was obvious. Gone was everything that made Peugeot cool, the small GTi was a fat slug dragging its belly around, kids didn't like them and Luc Besson's masterpiece from 1998 - TAXI seemed all but forgotten. In the early 2000s just as Sonique was singing 'Sky' I started feeling that they were getting just a tad too comfortable with being nothing more than a mode of transportation, there was no soul in the Peugeot brand.
For a long time that is just what they were. They were this quirky French company that always had practical solutions to the problem of transportation.
Peugeot have always been a guilty pleasure for many of us.
