Why didn't Peugeot make this 2000 concept car?

Ah, Peugeot. The company’s really started to get it together nowadays, with a bit of sharp styling and a notion that people might want to enjoy being behind the wheel, but there was a bit of a lull there. Alright, a 20-year lull, one marked by gopping grilles and lardy styling. Misfires like the electric sliding doored 1007 that was a hit with pensioners. In fact, the oh-seven range of cars was so universally mediocre and unreliable that they broke Peugeot’s naming system and the company just decided to call everything the something-oh-eight after that. 

This is the Promethee concept that appeared at the 2000 Paris motor show – it was supposed to be a preview of new 307, which would appear the following year (which was 2001). Even with the hazy fog of years passed you might be thinking that the Promethee concept doesn’t very much look like the 2001 Peugeot 307, and you’d be right, because it didn’t. 

See? Strange, isn’t it, because with the lengthy lead times that you have in the car industry everything about the 307 would have been long signed off by the time it came to present the Promethee at the Geneva motor show. They would have been thinking about what font to use in the brochure, or which nice Mediterranean hotel to host the press launch at. 

The front end was supposed to be a direct preview of the upcoming production car, so there was always that. But you can imagine feeling short changed if you had been looking forward to a car that looked as dynamic and exciting as the Promethee concept. Such stance, much elegance. Look at those bold lines, that abruptly cut off rear and the Volvo 480-style glass hatch at the back. 

The Promethee concept might not have been a brilliant preview for the 307 hatchback, but strangely it was a dead ringer (completely different styling and everything else aside) for the Mazda RX-8 that would come along in 2003. You’d think the Japanese engineers had almost put tracing paper over the French effort. Actually it was really just that the Peugeot had normal front doors and then a teeny little rear thing that slid back on the passenger side of the car to offer access to the rear seats. That was quite clever of the Mazda lot, who swapped the sliding rear door for two rear-hinged suicide jobs.

The interior of the Promethee concept was the most production-plausible aspect of the whole shebang – perhaps the plastics were a little more exciting than they would be in the 307, the design a little sleeker. The concept was dressed up as a four-seater, with a frankly thrilling extreme receding windscreen line that would make for a great view out the front of the car. The boot was made almost entirely of glass, making it almost impossible to hide any valuables in the car when you parked up. So impractical, these concepts. 

Peugeot’s managing director at the time of the Promethee’s reveal said that the car included a “laboratory of ideas”, one of which was sticking a nice diesel engine under the bonnet, a 2.0-litre 4cyl HDi bad boy with a particulate filter fitted. The early 2000s really were the golden age of diesel, it was the bright hope for the future. Much like nuclear before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Well, it did, if you believe Peugeot. But no one was fooled. The 307 could have been an excitingly styled, bold new hatchback for the ages, putting Peugeot in the very pantheon of top carmakers. Instead we ended up with a bland cucumber sandwich of a thing that looked like an Easter egg box. And let’s not even get started on the hard-top convertible version.