I’m not going to sugar-coat it: the 405 was and so far remains my least-favourite big Peugeot. Maybe it’s because these were absolutely everywhere when I was in my teens. But then, so was the 205, and I love those. It’s likelier because all the 405s I’ve been in (and there were a few) were invariably poorly-finished Diesel-powered yawnfests. Will this spicy Mi 16 version in its traditionally immaculate Japanese condition change my mind?
Anyone in the ‘80s and ‘90s who bought a larger Peugeot in Europe in general (and in France in particular) went for a Diesel. That was just a given. I have no specific numbers at hand here, but it definitely felt as if 80% of 505s, 405s and 406s on French roads were loud, smoky and slow Diesels. In Japan, Peugeot didn’t even bother offering their vaunted oil-burners: the local clientele barely bought a few handfuls of the locally-made ones, so a Diesel-powered import would have seemed completely out of place. As far as I can tell, 0nly Mercedes sold a token few here, in those days.
When Peugeot launched the 405 in June 1987, it was a small revolution for them: the first bigger Pug to feature FWD, using a modified / de-Citroënized version of the BX’s platform. The plan was also to launch the esthetically-similar (but bigger still) 605 very soon after, but that ended up taking a couple of years, thereby extending the reign of last of the rear-drivers, the 505, for a little longer at the top of Peugeot’s range.
Like the 505 though, the 405 was styled in Italy by Pininfarina and would only come in two body variants: saloon and wagon. Gone were the days of the lovely PF-Peugeot coupés and/or cabriolets, at least for the -05 generation.
Depending on the market, the 405 could get a variety of 4-cyl. engines ranging from 1.4 to 1.9 litres for petrol and 1.8 or 1.9 for Diesels. So it was positioned both as the 305’s successor and a belated 404/504 replacement, with no access to the V6 (reserved for the 605). The version that everyone was supposed to lust after was the Mi 16. It had the same DOHC 4-cyl. seen in the 205 GTI, albeit with 16 valves and providing 160hp.
In 1989, an AWD version dubbed Mi 16 X4 was added to the range, giving the sporty 405 superb handling abilities thanks to a BX-derived hydropneumatics rear end. That same year, the 405 started being exported to North America and Japan. Unlike in Europe, southeast and western Asia, South America and Africa, Peugeot failed to garner any steam for the 405 in the US and Japan, strangely enough, even with the Mi 16.
Peugeot decided to leave the North American market altogether in 1991, so the story ended early there. In Japan though, the French firm was having some success with the 205 and the 309 at the time, so the 405 and 605 were kept on as wallflowers. In 1992, the 405 got a bit of a facelift, chiefly focused on the rear end and the interior. Simultaneously, the Mi 16 was given a bigger engine (a full 2-litre), but power went down slightly to 155hp, then 153hp the following year. However, a new T 16 variant appeared with a turbocharger – with 200hp, it would be the most powerful 405 of all.
Here’s what this revamped interior looks like. Pre-facelift cars had their designed by none other than Paul Bracq, but the quality of the plastics used in those was pretty dreadful. These later ones looked a tad more anonymous, but were slightly more durable.
What everyone agrees about the 405 is that it was a very comfortable and spacious car for its category. I can personally attest to this, though I’ve never experienced one with leather seats like this one.
Even somewhat de-fanged by its later 2-litre engine, this Mi 16 was still a relatively good performer and provided excellent accommodation for its passengers. But that was not quite enough to ensure its success in this faraway land: Peugeot’s image was decent enough, but the part of that reputation was built on robust quality control, which had slipped in the ‘70s and ‘80s. More expensive propositions like the 405 Mi 16 were harder to sell because of that, and because there were a lot of brilliant rivals.
A world apart from the likes of the Toyota Mark II, the Mazda MS-8 or the Nissan Laurel, which cost half as much, the higher end 2-litre imports were numerous and some were very successful. The Alfa 155, the BMW E36, the Mercedes W202 and even the Citroën BX, for example, were popular here. In wagon form, so were the Volvo and the Buick. The Pug just couldn’t match German quality and Italian brilliance in this segment. In Europe, it was competitively priced, but that was not the case in this market, certainly by 1993.
The 405 disappeared from Peugeot’s European range in 1996-97, but it lasted for many years in Iran. The body was mated to the Paykan (ex-Hillman Hunter)’s RWD platform and carried on as the Peugeot ROA until 2012. The 405’s platform, meanwhile, was kept in production for the ICKO Samand and its successors until 2025. They really squeezed all they could from that one.
Over five million 405s were made globally, so the fact that it failed to gain traction in a couple of markets did not have much of an impact on Peugeot’s hilarity-filled trip to the bank. I remain deeply unimpressed by its styling and, with the exception of this particular one, they seem not to age well at all. But it’s hard to argue against five million presumably happy customers.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1991 Peugeot 405 Mi16 – Orphaned at Birth, by The Professor
Curbside Classic: 1988 Peugeot 405 S – Rare Then, Rarer Now, by Tom Klockau
Curbside Classic: Peugeot 405 Wagon – We Don’t *Have* to Conquer Africa, by Geraldo Solis
I recall being pleasantly surprised by the absence of diesel cars when I first went to Japan, even the taxis were petrol unlike here in the UK.
The taxis in Japan were mostly LPG when I was there, but that is 30 years ago. I believe the Crown Comfort was exclusively LPG.
The Crown Comfort was available with a bunch of power options, including Diesel (rarely ordered), 2-litre 4-cyl. in petrol or LPG, 2-litre 6-cyl. petrol and probably others, but those are the more common ones. In Tokyo and the larger cities, LPG is favoured, but in more rural areas, where LPG may not be widely available, petrol is definitely a safer bet.
The current JPN taxi is a hybrid, but the fleets of black Crown Comforts (and Nissan Cedrics) will be with us for many more years. Those things are impossible to kill. I have seen new hydrogen-powered Crown taxis around town, btw — things keep evolving.
A friend in LA had one of these Mi16’s while I had an 88 VW Jetta GLI 16V.
The 4 Valve/cyl motors required you to keep the revs up to maximize power, but the redline was higher too. The Jetta was good above 3000 RPM. The Pug was 4000 and above.
The seats and suspension in the Pug were way more comfortable than the Recaros and Bilsteins (?) in the GLI
The Jetta was the 405s biggest problem, since iirc the base 405 cost what a full boat Jetta GLI 16V did, and even the B3 Passat cost less than the 405 model for model since VW was going for conquest sales from domestic and Japanese offerings with it (if not as successfully as they’d have liked, at least more so than Peugeot was).
Although the 405 was sold in Canada, I have never seen one in person. What I lament is how Peugeot cheapened out the interiors of their cars. My university gf had a 505, and while the supremely comfortable seats and magic carpet ride were still there, the dash plastics screamed “cheap.” The 504 had a beautiful interior but the 505 did not.
I think I’ve seen exactly one in person in the US. When I was in college I was walking across campus and a guy driving a red 405 pulled over to ask me for directions. I really wish I had asked him what possessed him to buy a Peugeot.
There was at least one in Calgary 15 years ago. By total coincidence, I learned that a pizza delivery guy had a Renault Fuego (!) I had one as well, but had bent the front end and decided it was not worth repairing. Sold mine with the 2.2 L Bosch injected engine to pizza guy, who was going to transplant it into his 1.6 L. He gave me a ride home in his …
black Peugeot 205 Mi16. I was impressed with the ride.
The 504 dash reminded me of a 1966 Dodge Coronet or something. Very crude and ugly.
The 405 was a beautiful car; it was the last Peugeot sold in the US, although I saw fewer 405s than 504s or 505s.
All great cars, even its competitors on the list.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it either: This is one of my favorite Peugeots. But alas, gone as a brand from these shores before I could afford it. And then when I could afford it, those that were left were mostly gone too.
Curiously you class this in the “large” Peugeot category which is the first time I have heard it described as such! I consider it a small car, on par size-wise with maybe the Jetta and eventually the Volvo S40/V40 of the late 90s. All decidedly small, for the U.S. anyway. No way in the same class (size) as the Volvo 9×0 or Saab 9000. Or the Rover (Sterling?) and Regal for that matter. I think you’d be more comparing to Volvo 850 (still seemed larger), Saab 900, Acura Integra 4/5 door and in Buick maybe the Skylark…I would though put the 605 against those others.
Peugeot’s big failing in the U.S. (in my humble opinion) was to not bring the 205 here. The Golf was respectable and desirable in those days, the Japanese had various of that ilk as well but the Americans had nothing really beyond the Omni and Escort. Why not Peugeot, they had literally the full range available (2dr, 4dr, GTI, and Cabriolet) and really only needed two engines, the GTI one and a slghtly detuned one, just like VW did.
The Mi16 you caught here still looks mighty good, and that metallic gray is the proper color for it.
FWIW, his comparison is for all these cars as sold in Japan. My reading of the Japanese market back then (and still now?) is that certain import brands had lots of cache/prestige, precisely because they were imports, especially those from Germany. My quite wealthy host when I visited in 1982 drove an Audi 80. He had a family and kids, but I really don’t think size entered much into the equation. It’s not like the car was used to ferry the kids to school or after school activities.
Meaning, I believe buyers bought the import brands that spoke to them in terms of image and prestige value and did not go running around to all of the various dealers to compare the details of rear seat leg room or such. They really wanted an…Audi, or BMW, or Mercedes, or even a Peugeot. And some even a Buick Regal. But did anyone in Japan attracted to a Regal cross shop it with a 405 M16?
For that matter, I happen to think that’s also much more the case in the US and even in Europe. Buyers have a pretty high degree of brand interests/loyalty. And issues of the details of size is often quite secondary. Obviously price is an issue, more so than size. Hence the popularity (at the time) of the Mercedes 190, which had almost no rear leg room to speak of. But it had a star on the hood.
Frankly, I have long wondered how relevant these kind of comparisons are. How many buyers in this category actually considered more than one or two of the others at most? Why did you want a 405 M16? Because you cross shopped it carefully or because you read a couple of reviews that raved about it?
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but I have never, ever cross shopped any new car I’ve bought. When the impetus came to buy something new, I already knew what I wanted or would be the best choice. The only exception was when Stephanie wanted a new car and we did drive several others. But that’s just me; I hate shopping!
Oh. Now I see I missed the headline on the chart itself where it states vehicles around the 4 million yen mark in 1993. I still sort of wonder where the Saab 900 and Volvo 850 would compare in that case but the inclusion of the others make more sense to me now…
I believe in Europe the cross shopping, especially for this size and class of car, has historically been relevant in that many of these types of vehicles were company cars, i.e. you had a budget and a size and maybe even a list of candidates from your employer that was paying for it, so you might as well compare everything to see what you preferred.
I kind of like the chart in that I did like the 405 when it was new in the U.S. and until now didn’t really think about the Lancia Thema for instance (or the Alfa 155), but if I lived in France or Italy or I guess Japan and was in the market for something I probably would have looked at that too. And then probably bought some sort of Mitsubishi with 4 wheel everything and more lights than an arcade game…
I feel that Peugeot’s failing was the same as Renault and Citroen: They seriously dropped the ball with logistics, namely parts and service. When parts need to be ordered from France (this was during the “old days” when overnight air freight wasn’t common) and a complete failure to properly train mechanics, the ownership experience suffered profoundly. Not that I’m targeting the French (well, maybe I am a little), but they never figured out what Volkswagen, Nissan, and Toyota could with regard to North America.
The 405 was considered “large” by Japanese standards, meaning its dimensions were over the 5-number size limit. In Europe, it was a D-segment car, so on the larger side too. Only in the US would anyone ever call it small…
The Saab 9000 is bigger for sure, as is the Rover, but engine size and price also come into play. The Buick is a bit of an outlyier size- and engine-wise too, but hey, it adds a touch of exoticism to the table. The Saab 900 was more of a ¥3m car, so a bit too cheap for the table. The Volvo that would have also fit in there was the 240, then in its final year, which cost virtually the same as the Peugeot. But it looked even more out of place than the Buick, being a living fossil, so I leaned towards the 940 instead — bigger car with the smaller engine. The small car / big engine 850 would have worked too, with the base model at ¥4.1-4.5m (5-cyl., 2434cc, 170hp), so you could fit at least three Volvos into this grouping.
Just a bit of fun, those tables, of course. I don’t necessarily think anyone ever cross-shopped (or just “shopped”?) for a new car by thinking “Well, I’ve got about ¥4m in the bank and I need something with LHD that’ll be a pain to fix when it inevitably breaks down, so should I go for a BMW, an Alfa, a Honda made by Rover or a Citroën?” But it can be illustrative to see what else you could buy for that money back then. The price data, which is the hardest thing to come by for these tables, are easily available for the Japanese market going back to about 1990 on goo.net (https://www.goo-net.com/catalog/). This also shows that not everything was imported back then. GM typically chose a couple of models for each of their brands and peddled those, but just like Toyota never shipped the Soarer or the Crown to North America in the ’80s and ’90s, the Buick Skylark was probably not available in 1993 Japan, except by individual / private import.
“…so I leaned towards the 940 instead—a bigger car with the smaller engine.”
Dear Dr. Tatra, could you please answer a question for me?
Was the Volvo 940 also available in Japan with a two-liter gasoline engine (B200F), as was the case in some European markets?
And if you don’t mind, I would like to extend this question to include the Volvo 240.
Thank you in advance.
Please continue to add those tables to future articles. To me they provide some market context which I very much like to have reading an old car review.
I love the tables. They help provide some key market context.
The 405 was bigger than a Mk2 Jetta. It was roughly the same size as a late ’80s Honda Accord sedan, although it had a longer wheelbase and was a bit shorter overall. The Jetta was over 6 inches shorter on a much shorter wheelbase.
I’ll grant you the wheelbase difference but the A2 Jetta appears to be within an inch of the 405 in overall length, at least in the U.S. according to the multiple sources I checked.
The 1989 Accord sedan though appears to be about 6” longer than the 405 with a wheelbase about 3” shorter than the 405.
405 wb 105.1 Length 173.5
A2Jetta wb 97.3. Length 172.6
‘89Accord wb 102.4 Length 179.7
The 1990 U.S.-market 405 was 177.7 inches long; the 1990 U.S.-market A2 Jetta was 171.7 inches long. The Jetta GL was also about 2 inches narrower than the Peugeot. (The GLI 16V was 0.6 inches wider than the GL because of its fender flares, but it was still narrower than the 405.)
A favourite? Not quite – I’d pick the BX off this platform ahead of the Peugeot and I never really got on with the styling and stance of these. But no doubting the comfort, handling and cruising abilities of these, and the practicality of the diesel estates.
Interesting that you pick the Rover 800 as a benchmark – in the UK market the 405 was up against the Austin Montego and the 16V against tail end of MG Montego and MG Montego Turbo production, and the Ford Sierra
Alas, the MG Montego was probably not imported in Japan at the time. Nor was the Sierra, come to that. The only car I could find price data for (and that sort of fit the table, being a 2-litre saloon) was the Rover 820. If I had designed the table in an EU market, things would have been different — a few Japanese cars would have been included, for a start…
The Buick Regal is a real outlier in that group.
I liked it the moment I saw a picture of it in R&T, and bought one. Yes, the interiors were flimsy but the seats were oh so nice.
And in NA, very much a compact car. As Jim says, a size below the Buick et al.
I do have the numbers of Diesel engined 405’s sold in France. They weren’t as many as they felt, just a bit less of half of them were Diesel, with higher figures in 1990 and especially 1991, with demand reaching over 60%.
Really? Why, the 405 is from no less than the House of Small Farinas (whereas the stablemate BX is from part of Gandini’s house, the outhouse, I suspect), and is such an elegant piece they inflated it for the 605 and squared it off for the Alfa 164. I’ve always thought it a subtly sweet-looking car, though I remember GM designer Leo Pruneau describing the Mi16 bodykit as “godamn awful kitchen-sink stuff” (and agreeing wholeheartedly). They are also very nice indeed to drive, and ride with old-school French damping excellence. If you drove one and compared steering, ride and feel to ANY Japanese contender of the the era, the competitors felt brittle and feel-free.
Unfortunately, circumstances of the economy meant that they were priced as expensive cars here, with most thus being 8 valve autos, (and of course, “auto” is translated by the French as “If you can’t be bothered, neither can we” and gave the buyer of herky pot of melted Gruyere as a gearbox from that day to this). They proved not-flash in build or reliability, certainly not Japanese levels at minimum.
Still an all, I’ll defend them. My mate’s manual of the second series was a damn nice car. Btw, the update of ’92 was not minor – the car recieved serious body strengthening, and judging by the only 1st series I drove, felt way more solid.
Did the 205 Gti get the 16v Mi16 engine France?
Actually, no production version of the 205 GTi ever had the 16 valve engine, for any market. A few have been retrofitted, by committed petrolheads, but not a bolt in job, if I remember rightly it involves things like repositioning the distributor.
True that, the Mi 16’s engine was more powerful than the 205 GTI’s (160hp vs 130hp). I amended the text.