Have you ever wondered about that whole zero-in-the-middle numbering system Peugeot has had going on for the better part of a century by now? How can it be sustainable? Will we get to the Peugeot 310? I was wondering that myself, so I looked into it. And the answer is both simple and complicated. But first, a look at the Peugeot numbering system as we think we know it…
Back in 1929, Peugeot launched the 201, a small car that did very well for itself. Up to that point, Peugeots just had a number, starting from the first car sold by the firm in 1891, the Type 2 (a Type 1 was made, but never sold). Plenty of numbers between 2 and 201 were skipped along the way, but nevertheless when Peugeot got to 201, the sales department figured that a clear numbering system might help non-Peugeot people, which it turned out was the overwhelming majority of the planet, figure out what cars were in the range.
The first digit designates the car’s class / size – the higher the number, the larger the car. The final digit just signified the generation of models, starting from 1. The first generation, by 1935, was complete: the 201 had been followed by the 301, then the 601 and now the 401.
In 1936, the new generation 402 (the 401 only lasted a single year!) took things up a notch. Other numbers would be skipped along the way, of course: the 602 never existed because Peugeot abandoned the 6-cyl. market, but there were serious plans for the 802, which alas never materialized.
The -03 generation of the ‘50s were only represented by two models, but the -04s or the ‘60s and ‘70s saw an explosion of new class designations.
The smallest car became the 104; the 204 and 304 were variations of the same platform (like before, really), the 404 would just not die, so its replacement was dubbed 504. In 1975. Peugeot topped the -04 series by returning to the 6-cyl. segment with the 604.
There were fewer -05s (the 105 was skipped) for the civilian market, but they did create a racer named Peugeot 905 that won Le Mans in 1992. In the -06 generation, the use of the 806 number showed that a new type of car was in the range: a minivan.
With the -07 and -08 generations, Peugeot found themselves having to cheat a bit. The advent of the crossover meant that a number of new models were coming into the range. The solution was the double-zero: the standard 308 saloon remained a 308 saloon, but the lifted crossover became the 3008.
Which brings us to the present day. The -08 generation has been with us for over a decade now, long enough for a number of models to tick over to a new generation. Yet many have notince that the numerals have remained stuck on -08. This is actually a deliberate strategy on Peugeot’s part.
Of course, they could have gone up to the -09 generation. But that would just have moved the problem to a few years down the line. Besides, there was the thorny issue of the 309: this car, initially planned to be a Talbot, was kind of shoehorned into the range in 1986 when the Talbot marque was euthanized and stayed there, screwing up Peugeot’s precious sequencing, for a decade.
Peugeot figured that they might as well stick with the magic -08 numbers for the time being and keep the iconic zero-in-the-middle schtick going for longer. Peugeot’s top brass figure that keeping the same numbers would also help with model identification. Besides, the number eight is considered very lucky in East Asia (especially China), so there really is no compelling reason not to freeze the count at -08, Peugeot’s PR argues.
The thing about eight being a lucky number in some countries is true, and might be the only part of the whole justification for sticking with -08 that makes sense. But thinking that it will help with branding is, I think, straight-up BS. As cars change and their names stay the same, people will become increasingly confused. Nobody complained about finding the Peugeot system complicated in the past century, as far as I know.
It’s like Mercedes and their system: “Mercedes 300” became essentially void of meaning by the ‘70s, because it could mean so many cars. Enthusiasts who know the internal W-numbers (or E-numbers at BMW, where the situation is similar) can use those, but they’re not suited for general public use. So BMW and M-B gradually added a bunch of alphabet soup to their numerals, which is not optimal but better than nothing. Will Peugeot have to do the same?
They already are – see the RCZ and the recent proliferation of letters in sub-model names. It was always going to become an issue at some point, this zero-in-the-middle concept. The other solution might be to bite the bullet and start over. After all, the -01 series was current 90 years ago. And Peugeot did do a bit of that too: they launched the 301 in 2012, a model made specifically for emerging markets. But there’s only one such model, any other Peugeot sold there is an -08.
So from a model-naming point of view, Peugeot is a bit of a mess right now. What’s the solution? It’s getting increasingly difficult to switch over to the -09 generation, but they could still do it. Skip the 309, obviously, but otherwise, bring on the rest of the range to its logical arithmetic conclusion. That’ll give Peugeot another decade to figure out what to do next, which might as well be to re-start at -01. Which they’ve sort-or-half-done, but not in all markets. Messy.
The zero-in-the-middle system served Peugeot well for 100 years, it could do 100 more. After a century, it’s safe to think that most folks will not readily recall the O.G. 201 or 401 from 1935. So, Stellantis, what are we doing with this? Standing still forever or winding the clock back to something that makes sense?
The exceptions to the numbers are the RCZ and the Partner, Expert, Traveller and Boxer vans.
Plus Peugeot Rifter for MPV. Peugeot Partner Rapid based on Fiat Fiorino in South Amerika and Peugeot Landtrek Pick up around the World without USA and Europa. Before the Commercials where called D3, D4, J7 and J9. And J5 before called Boxer.
And last there was the iON, a Electro Car built from Mitsubishi.
Boeing faces a similar issue. They planned to add 2000 for their SST.
Why is that zero in the middle so precious anyway? Why not just keep going to -09, -10, -11 and so on / that would keep the clear and simple system going. Or are they afraid Porsche would sue them? 😀
Well, well, the 6 cylinder Porsche to replace the 356 was originally intended to be called the Porsche 901 at the 1963 Frankfurt International Motor Show, however by the time production of the Porsche 901 the name had been changed to the 911 after Peugeot
objected by raising legal trademark issues regarding the original 901 designation. Porsche complied with the legal challenge by changing the designated name to the Porsche 911. Interestingly 911 parts inventory numbers remained unchanged with the numbers beginning with 901…… For example the engine casting case numbers remained unchanged beginning with the prefix 901 going forward.
So Peugeot ironically essentially trapped themselves with their legal trademark challenge with the smaller Porsche enterprise in 1963 in order to preserve their use of the middle “0”, and simultaneously gave essentially likely, unintended legal freedom (ah, unintended consequences, haha) to Porsche to have more discretion in its future model names. The Porsche model name 911 has been the marketing name for multiple Porsche models over the years with other internal manufacturing numbers , for example the Porsche 996 and 997 models were still marketed worldwide as a 911, though many Porsche enthusiasts refer to those models as the 996 and 997 although the lay public know those models as 911’s…..amusingly confusing, wouldn’t you say? So when legal trademark issues intervene, the marketing waters get quite muddy, so don’t feel too sorry for Peugeot. Be careful for what you wish.
and simultaneously gave essentially likely, unintended legal freedom (ah, unintended consequences, haha) to Porsche to have more discretion in its future model names
I’m not getting this. How did this give Porsche unintended freedom with future model names? They were free to call their future models anything other than a three digit series with a zero in the middle. That’s what Peugeot objected to.
To the best of our knowledge, Peugeot has never objected to the zero in the middle. Neither against Porsche, Ferrari, Bristol nor others with a zero in the middle of their model name.
In the days leading up to the Paris Motor Show, Ferry only remembered what his father, and especially his uncle Anton Piech, had been involved in during the occupation.
Even though Bristol (and later Ferrari) had a zero in the middle, Ferry was aware that in his case, any statement from Peugeot, in whatever form, would have made public what had happened during the dark times. Grass had grown over it for 20 years, and he didn’t want to be the camel that ate it all back.
Peugeot’s current numbering system can work. The 8 for “highly developed” markets, the 1 to… for “underdeveloped” markets. At MB, C/D/E/S also works somehow.
Since I´m not forced to buy a vehicle from either of them at the moment and in near future, I don’t really care what they call their junk.
One has to keep in mind that these trademark issues back then were country-by-country issues. According to the Porsche history website (screenshot attached below) Porsche had checked to make sure there was no 901 being used in any of the countries they were likely to sell it in. Peugeot claimed that they had trademarked the sequence of three digits with a zero in the middle “in France”. So Porsche could have kept the 901 designation if the changed the name of it in France. This is what Ford had to do with its Mustang in Germany back in the ’60s, as the name was already in use there so they changed it to T-5.
I’m inclined to believe the official story.
Was that true about French law protecting a three numeral number? In the US when in 1993 replacing the i486, Intel named its new range of CPU chips “Pentium” because others had brought out their own “386”, “586” etc. The ruling was that in the US, as a general principle (there are limited exceptions), a number couldn’t be trademarked or otherwise protected, thus the coining of “Pentium”. Intel had switched its naming from “80486” to “i486” but that didn’t solve the problem which was others engaging in something between “piggyback marketing” and “usurpation”. Peugeot’s cease and desist letter to Porsche about the 901 seems strange because Mercedes-Benz had for years been selling 300s in France, had just announced the 600 and BMW’s earlier 503, 507 etc weren’t renamed for France.
It was different with text-strings because most jurisdictions do allow them to be protected. Sunbeam Tigers in South Africa and some European countries were sold as the “Alpine 260” because Panhard in France was then selling a Tigre and Messerschmitt in the FRG held the trademark to Tiger. Sunbeam was able to use the Alpine name in France on the basis of “prior use”, their original Alpine first sold there in 1953, thus pre-dating the French venture Automobiles Alpine, the corporate identity of which wasn’t formalized until 1955.
Was that true about French law protecting a three numeral number?
I don’t know; I’m hardly an expert on copyright/trademark law in Europe in the 60s. But this is what every credible source has said. Porsche obviously didn’t want to get in a fight about it. They had already built a small number of 901s before they changed the official name to 911. Clearly this was a highly unexpected last minute issue that they confronted.
This article (in French) is quite interesting. (I read the text translated into English, so as usual, I’m sure some complexities are lost, but still the point comes across.)
https://www.carjager.com/blog/article/porsche-de-901-a-911-les-vraies-raisons-de-la-colere-de-peugeot.html
The thesis here is that Peugeot’s objection to Porsche using the 901 name had more to do with WWII-era grievances against Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch than actual trademark law. After all, Peugeot didn’t object to the many 1950s BMW models with a middle zero – or cars from other manufacturers.
The disposition and plundering of Peugeot factories during WWII is something I don’t know much about – this is the first I’ve read of this, so I’ll leave it to others who are more knowledgeable to offer opinions. But it’s an interesting take on this issue – suggesting that Peugeot brought up the 901’s numbering as a matter of principle, and Porsche just wanted to avoid a conflict that could bring up historical wrongs, so they politely renamed the car – citing the honoring of trademarks – and was done with it.
Eric, this is excellent information, on a subject that I’ve wondered about as there was clearly some ambiguity involved (other cars with zeros in the middle of three digits). I sort of assumed that Peugeot’s claim was probably not ironclad legally, and that Porsche clearly did not want to fight the issue. But I was not familiar with the details of what happened with the Peugeot factory, although I did know of the imprisonment of Porsche.
This spells it out very clearly. Thanks for digging it up.
This is indeed excellent, Eric. Something has always struck me as bogus about the 911 re-naming story – and that account extracted from the official Porsche website has such a particular stench of PR bullshit about it that I’m very pleased to see it completely debunked here!
I’d like to add my voice. An excellent article by Carjager to enlighten the dark. My sincere thanks to Eric703 for providing the link.
I’m glad I was able to dig this up, and that you all found it as interesting as I did. I agree that the “trademarked numbers story” had some baffling holes in it, so to me, this seems like a credible explanation. Glad to help!
Justy wrote: and that account extracted from the official Porsche website has such a particular stench of PR bullshit about it that I’m very pleased to see it completely debunked here!
It was hardly “completely debunked”. In essence, the story by Porsche is quite true: Peugeot officially objected on a claim that they had rights to three digit names with zeros in the middle. And Porsche chose not to legally fight that claim. They just left out the reason why they didn’t fight, as stated in the article. But one can almost read it between the lines.
The unknown aspect is if Peugeot’s claim would actually have held up in court.
I like that suggestion, advancing into e.g. the 3010, 3011 and so forth. It’s similar to dot-notated software versioning, where the dots aren’t meant to be decimal points, so e.g. v3.9 could be succeeded by v3.10, etc.
Product nomenclature is an important part of branding, and, having managed same for a Fortune 50 manufacturer for nearly two decades before retiring, I can attest that it’s challenging to come up with meaningful nomenclature that works with internal company systems, differentiates against competitive product nomenclature, and can clearly communicate updates over decades of improvements (there was another Model A Ford before the one we’re all familiar with, for example).
This is why I like “names” better than numbers. Of course, I grew up with this system here in US, so there’s that.
I know what an Impala Is, just tell me the year. (Although, I don’t LOVE the Impala Name, but I know what it represents, awesomeness).
BelAir. Caprice. Coupe Deville. Falcon. Marauder. Cutlass. LeMans. Aspen. Nova. Grand Prix. Chevelle. Biscayne. Mustang. Camaro. Barracuda. Challenger. Charger. Roadmaster. Maveri.. DOH! (maybe not Maverick, don’t know what Genius at ford came up with that). Well, you get the Idea. Good or bad, give me Names. Unless the numbers are 442 perhaps.
Thanks for this. I remember reading long ago that Peugeot battled with Porsche (in legal venue) when Porsche proposed naming its new car the 901. Eventually that became the 911, but (if I remember correctly) Peugeot had already trademarked 901 as a model name in several markets – and they weren’t about to give that up. I don’t know about the accuracy of that story, but I remember reading some version of that.
Sadly, once Peugeot left North America, I stopped paying detailed attention to their model names. For me, their nomenclature is frozen in time with the 505, 405 and 604. So I found this article interesting… I didn’t realize they’re now frozen in the 8’s.
I agree with Terry above that I prefer names over numbers. But anything is better than random letters, or some kind of baffling alphanumeric soup. RCZ? For all I know that could be a new Acura, or something else. Completely unmemorable, in my opinion.
My memory is not that Peugeot had already trademarked the 901 designation, but that Peugeot objected to any three digit series with a zero in the middle, as they had been using variations of that combination for some two decades.
That’s interesting – and thanks for the Porsche history screenshot above. That’s an interesting legal interpretation (that Peugeot had been using similar numbers for so long that they legal rights to all similar numbers). But maybe French trademark laws worked that way. I’d love to find a period French article about this.
In the early seventies, DAF wanted to put a small ‘304’ badge on the grille of their heavy-duty 2600-series, it referred to the DIN-hp rating of the 11.6 liter turbodiesel. Peugeot thought this was a bad idea and objected, so in the end, no 304 badge on the DAFs.
When a non-gearhead Australian sees a Falcon, do they think, “There’s an XA/XB/whatever Falcon,” or do they just think, :”There’s a Falcon.”?
I can’t really answer for them, being a gearhead, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a non-gearhead ever mention which Falc they’ve seen. Now, the only identifier you might get is “old”!
In our family it’d be ‘You know, like that blue 70s Falcon your Uncle had after that old green Fairmont V8 he bought when you were born” or “like Grandad’s maroon 80s Fairmont – that looked like the silver Fairmont he had before that but with a more rounded front end, but not as rounded as that 90s Fairmont he had”, etc!
Peugeot’s trademark enforcement efforts seem to have been stopped by both the Iron Curtain (Trabant 601, Tatra 603) and the Atlantic Ocean (at times cars powered by the Chevy 305, Ford 302 and AMC 401cid engines all bore fender callout emblems with those displacements in cubic inches).
I don’t think so. the 6xx series were always the top of the line, so they started with 604 and went up from there. And Trabant and Tatra almost certainly had not registered those numbers in France. Trademarks were country-specific back then. And those US engine call out badges have no relevance; they are not trademarked as automotive model names. Chevy had a 302 engine too, as just one example.
I’m a Pug lover, so I take note of the numerics: just keep adding zeroes in the middle till the car’s tail is written right across in 30 years time, I say. Benefit of novelty.
But most people in the world to whom a company must sell cars haven’t a clue as to numbers on their car, and care even less. Especially on modern Pugs, which look (and drive) like an Anonycar from Anywhere.
My two Francs worth is that the company should do a Renault, and change to names. Peugeot is a weak-to non-existent brand outside of Europe (and bits of Africa), so a complete brand re-launch might not hurt at all.
As a curious aside, ask the great unwashed what do they picture when one says “Porsche”, they’ll describe the 911 – but almost certainly not name it that. So it turns out that what matters most of all is to make a fine and distinctive car, and I’m afraid that the somewhat frangible (and now also bland) reputation of later Peugeots outside of their homeland doesn’t meet that criterion. They need to do work on that perhaps more than anything else.
Peugeot do have a presence in Asia. Chinese and Indonesian sales have gone down precipitously, but they used to be pretty large 10 years ago. You see plenty of Pugs in places like Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and in west Asia / MENA as well. They have a pretty large footprint in Latin America, too.
The thing about names is they can sound weird, silly or wrong, or be plain impronouncable, from one language to the next. Numbers are a lot safer to use for global products like cars.
10.
Not taking issue with the branding, Justy, but you left out most of South America, where Peugeot has been a major brand since the 50s/60s onward, with large production facilities in Argentina and then in Brazil.
All of the comments here are true.
Still, apart from all of Europe, a chunk of Africa, and a decent bit of Latin America and some of Asia, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Pug lover here too, and owner of a 308 and 508. Neither one looks overly bland – being a 2013 wagon the 308 leans more towards wilfully unattractive; and the bodykit on our 2016 508 RXH (like the image above) makes it look suitably European ski wagon!
If Peugeot changed to names, might they run the risk that the model name may become more memorable and known than the brand name? Sort of like how the Mustang name is so well know that people say ‘Oh look a Mustang’ instead of a Ford.
The 508’s a nice looker, but you’ve got to admit, it’s not exactly distinctive. As for the 308 wagon of that time, it doesn’t so much as lean towards willful ugliness so much as it towers over it, sits down on it, rests, and then ultimately mates with it.
I think they should replace the zero with an Ô 😉