A forgotten road fighter from Peugeot has become valuable out of necessity, beautiful pieces are still worth a fortune

You had to be a fan of cars from an expensive line of years ago to even notice its existence, today it is generally a rarity as a used car and almost non-existent in good condition. A few nice pieces cost a fortune.

The Peugeot 309 is a car with an extremely complicated history. Many perceive it as a “205 with a trunk”, but it is far from that simple. It began its life as the intended successor to the Talbot Horizon, i.e. a cheaper brand of the PSA group, which also acted as Chrysler or Simca in some markets. It should have been called Arizona, but before its fate could turn in that direction, the parent group decided to end the use of the three mentioned alternative brands in Europe. However, she still wanted to sell the car in progress.

Thus, Peugeot was born, which followed and did not follow the 305 model, which is why it was also called the 309. Although the assignment to complete its development was to use a maximum of parts from the 205 (including complete doors and an extended floor platform), inside it is more about Simca and Chrysler than about Peugeot. Even the design of the car was created outside the usual structures of the lion brand – Peugeot had its bodies made by Pininfarina until the end of the 1990s, but the appearance of the 309 was again taken care of by the designers of the two aforementioned brands, although they did not have such a difficult task in specifying the similarity with the two hundred and five.

For these reasons, the 309 is not as respected as the 205, it was simply a worse car, although still interesting and ultimately a sales success. But one version has garnered admiration from the moment it appeared – the GTI. And it’s sad that today many people don’t even remember that it was created at all.

Precisely in order to give the 309 a better image, Peugeot more diligently created a GTI variant using the technology of the same name and now legendary 205 GTI. The car thus received a relatively large petrol 1.9 with 122 horses, with which, at a weight of only 909 kg (an absolutely incredible number today), it peddled very convincingly – it reached 100 km/h in 8.7 seconds and reached a speed of up to 202 km/h. The standards have changed in this direction as well, but they are still not shameful numbers. And this car appeared on the market in 1987, then it was a road fighter of sorts.

Even the 309 GTI ended up paying for one of the best sharp compacts and experienced great sales success, especially in Great Britain – as late as 1995, more than 10,000 units were on the road. What remains of them today? We’ll tell you exactly that: 54 cars, that’s what the British registry says. The vast majority of the others will be long gone, and we suspect that not every one of those 54 specimens will be exactly show-worthy. But the piece in the photos below is even more interesting.

It is offered for sale by the Danish company with the distinctive name Flashback Motors, a specialist in exceptional cars of the past. She managed to get a brand new 309 GTI from the first owner from Milan, Italy. So it has driven 79,000 km, which is not a little, yet the company says that it is the most well-preserved example that has appeared on sale recently. The car is said to have been used only on special occasions throughout its existence, and its owner won awards for the most well-maintained 309 GTI at domestic rallies, among other things, and received special attention from vintage magazines. And from the looks of it, the car is in really extremely good condition.

If you are interested in it, it can be yours for DKK 199,900, i.e. about CZK 670,000. The price tag is high due to the long-term ignorance of the 309 as such, but that’s how things are today – we see even worse and even slightly more expensive pieces on sale, prices reach up to 28,000 Euros, i.e. over 700,000 CZK. Today, it is simply an investment rarity, which the seller says will one day turn into a car worth millions (in Czech crowns). It may be, check out all the essentials below.

Many people have already forgotten the existence of the Peugeot 309 GTI, but now it can still be remembered with a beautiful specimen from the Danish specialist’s offer. Photo: Flashback Motors, published with permission

Source: Flashback Motors

Peter Miller

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