Very cool diesel wagon in Austin for sale
 

http://austin.craigslist.org/car/192550235.html

Is that awesome or what!! :D

someone down my street has one of those but i dont know if its a diesel or not. Its been sitting in the same spot too for the 10yrs weve lived in this house. I should go and ask if its a diesel and ask if they want to sell it. Its just collecting dust and fading away.....

nice car tho!

A Pukegeot? They sucked in france, they sucked over here, and AFAIK they still do. :P

Huh?
 

How is a Peugeot cool?

I dig the wood in the back. :)

Jimmy,this car would look really nice sitting next to ,ah lets say like a 240d with a manual trans? For sure it would be a very cool Euro Surf Wagon.The wood is awesome.Johnny:D

I had a Jeep Cherokee with (I believe) that same engine (with intercooler ?).
Valves are belt driven and I replaced them after the belt broke.
Then it broke again wiping out the head as well.
Peugeot diesels are *****.

Expose that car to a corrosive environment and it will literally dissapear before your eyes. Rust is a REAL issue with Peugeot.

But, those diesel Peugeots are pretty neat; the people that have owned them loved them. I've heard claim that they actually handle better than a W123.

As Mark Twain said about weird things: "I'ts it's it's it's French".

Its hard to believe the straight forward Metric System came from France.

P E H

This is true. When the suspension is in good order, the Peugeots of this era will outhandle a BMW of similar vintage. My family owned one (an '83) in the mid-80s; my father's brother sold them for a (short) while. On test drives, the dealership employees were told to tell the potential buyers to drive over RR tracks at 50 mph. You could barely feel a thing. Very nice cars; some French idiosyncrasies and, as noted, rust issues. By '88, when my folks sold ours, it had slight rust at the rear window seal, as did the panel underneath the front windshield, and this was in Austin, Texas. :eek: Two weeks later, the buyer fell asleep driving at ~60 mph, hit a tree off of Loop 1 in Austin, and survived, his most serious injury being a broken ankle. If anyone who lives near Austin buys this, PM me; I know the name of a wonderful Peugeot mechanic (who is also wonderfully eccentric) in Austin. He can get *any* part...and is willing to work on Volvo diesels, too. ;)

--Chris

My brother had a 504 diesel sedan, and it was noisy. You can hear the diesel clatter a block away especially at night. It drove great, but it smoked and was in the shop for many many things. It costed him so much on repair that he was glad to trade it in for something more reliable.

504
 

I used to drive a college buddie's diesel 504 in the early 80's.

Never forget a 2:30 am drive in that 504 to Rindge, NH from Boston to pick up a couple of kidnapped fraternity brothers. Very comfortable, stable, solid and well handling car. Remember cranking Roxy Music's Avalon on that trip.

Durable as hell too. This one went well over 200,000 miles and did not rust.

My brother spent 2 years in N.W. Africa and 504 and 504 wagons were very popular there.

My 2 cents.

In 1981 my parents wanted to buy an economical sedan as a second car. I remember we test drove a BMW 320i, Mercedes 240D, and Peugeot 505SD, all with 4-speed manual transmissions.

My parents settled on the Peugeot. If they had bought the Mercedes, I would be driving it now, no doubt (so, I had to buy my own).

The Peugeot seats and shock absorbers are the best (when new). The 505 was 'peppier' and better handling than the W123, and to an extent, the W115. However, I think my parents' car was cursed from the start: Lights and parts on the right side kept going bad. On the first trip, before even 1500 miles, the aux fan didn't work, and the engine repeatedly overheated. The sunroof belt broke many times. The lights in the electric window switches burned out constantly (expensive and difficult to replace).

I learned to drive on that car, and before the drivers test, the starter didn't want to work, then once running, the turn signal died halfway thru the test. Sometime afterwards the water pump failed, and the head gasket failed, and the sunroof broke again. The car always had a tendency to heat up at idle and activate the aux fan...my 240D will idle forever and the temp stays constant.

The engine in the 504 and 505 diesels seemed to be pretty reliable all in all (blown head gaskets apprently are common, though), and we got better fuel mileage than my 240D. It sounds similar to the 240D too, on the road, but the Benz sounds better at idle. The 505 never puffed smoke, never broke down on the highway and had no rust (of course it was garaged its whole life).

My mom sold the car at about 105K and knew the next owners. The engine blew shortly thereafter (not sure why) but the car lives on with new paint and a 2.5 turbodiesel coupled to the 4-speed.

I think the 504's are ugly but I like the wood panel in the cargo compartment of this one. BTW the plastic thing in the back is the factory winter front that clips to the grill.

-AC

I had one
 

I bought a new 81 Peugeot 505 turbodiesel in 81 and loved and hated it for 15 years and 200k miles.

The diesel motor was primitive and noisy but the car delivered 25 to 30 MPG for its entire life. It was tremendously fun to drive. The best riding car in the world if you are on rough roads. The suspension had 6 0r 8 inches more wheel travel than any car on the road. When you jacked it up the wheels just kept going down! It had struts in front and independent semi trailing arms in the back. The rear suspension was similar to a 123 or 126 except that the semi trailing arms were mounted on a subframe bar that went straight across as opposed to an eliptical subframe. So the rear wheels did not toe in and out as they went up and down. The car had wonderful compound valve shocks which combined with the wheel travel made the car feel like it was floating on a cloud. You would be driving along and cringe to see a huge pothole in the road that you wouldn't feel at all as you went over it. to sum it all up, I was driving down a real rough New Orleans road with a friend in the car and he asked "did they fix this road?" I guess that is why it was the number one selling car in the third world.

The problem with the car (and the reason Peugeot ultimately failed in the US) was that it was a maintenance nightmare. In the course of owning the car I ended up reengineering the electrical system. The alternator (a Paris-Rhone)kept blowing out diodes and I had it in and out of the car 4 times before I replaced it with a Valeo. Same with the starter which I could take out of the car blindfolded before I replaced it with another type of starter. I had to rip out the fuse box and completely re-wire it to get rid of the electrical gremlins in it. I constantly fought with the brake lights until I decided to run my own wire to the taillights. I had to have the car towed 3 times because the primer pump for the diesel system was just a little cheap diaphragm pump with a flimsy diaphragm that would start leaking air after a couple of years. My fix for that was to have a couple of extra diaphragms in the glove compartment.

Parts (which were always expensive and low in quality) got harder and harder to get after Peugeot withdrew from the US market. I finally got to the point where the car was only worth $200 but had a leaky head gasket and a bad steering rack and a bunch of other problems that would have cost a few grand to fix. That's when I got my 300SD.

I'l have to say that that it was the best handling and riding car I have ever had but I dont see how anybody could keep one of those suckers running today!