1992 Peugeot 205 Gentry Goes For a Drive

you join me today at the wheel of a peugeot 205 that i had never heard of today i'm taking a 205 gentry out for a ride proud to be sponsored by diamondbrite the car care products that have been keeping the furious fleet looking their best for a long time already to find all you need to keep your car clean and protected follow the link below to diamondbrite.com you know one of the most amazing things about doing this job is that even after nearly 20 years of taking photos of cars and seeing almost every car you can imagine i'm still sometimes surprised by finding something i'd never heard of so join with me today with a big round of i'm sorry what now for this the 1992 peugeot 205 gentry if you've never heard of the 205 gentry i will let you off because until about a week ago neither had i it was probably the most luxurious 205 ever built the ticket price with the one option this car could be inspected with was twelve thousand eight hundred pounds which in 2020 money is about twenty six and a half thousand which is pretty strong cash for a luxury super mini which wasn't really a thing in the early nineties so why does it exist why is it here tell me more fine i will this 205 gentry was destined for japan they built 600 of them for the japanese market in two colors 300 of them were in sorrento green which is like a dark metallic racing green color and the other 300 were in this aztec gold with matching aztec gold wheels which were unique to this car although when i say unique i think they mean in this color because we've been talking about this for a while and we think these might be from a 405 possibly a gr certainly not any other 205 model but yeah it's an interesting hybrid of bits let's take a look around at first glance sort of quick glass certainly these are often confused with the gti because it does have a lot of gti parts around the car these front lower spoilers the front fogs the side moldings are all gti stuff you've even got the two little twin flashes of plastic up by the fuel filler cap although there's no marking with an engine size on this particular car around the back it's all very discreet we've got the gentry badge we've also got the reversing light and rear fog light and of course 205 mud flaps which would have been an option everything else but obviously standard on this car now under the bonnet things get interesting because although it has a lot of gti appearance about it it's got more in common with the sddt which is kind of a luxury diesel version here on to the point we actually find a 1905 cc or 1.9 liter xu5 petrol fuel injected engine taken from a gti however it's g-tuned with a lighter camshaft so only makes 105 horsepower giving it an 0-60 of 11.6 it is an automatic and a top speed of 114 so despite the 1.9 liter engine those performance figures make it more akin to the 1.6 gti which got 106 horsepower but does have a naught to 60 of 8.7 and a top speed of 116. if this was the full fat 1.9 gti engine which you could change the camshaft over and turn it into that it would then get 130 horsepower now with the manual gearbox that gives at 060 of around seven seconds which is pretty potent from 1992. but of course that automatic is probably the reason they went for the bigger engine so more poke for the power loss through the sapping of that auto this is not the kind of luxury you expect to find in a peugeot 205. you've got these deep leather bucket seats which are fantastic you've got wooden inserts in the door you've got the sport steering wheel the carpet of the doors oh it's just fantastic in fact i can give you the full rundown of everything on this special edition so we've got the 1905 cc fuel injected engine this is from the actual brochure from the car four-speed auto we can see that there power steering the choice of the two colors special alloy wheels color keyed on the aztec gold car not on the green color look weird the body color rear panel so that center section with the peugeot badge and the gentry badge are that's normally black on these things but this car body colored inserts to the side moldings and bumpers silver on sorrento green gold on our state gold we saw that down the side these are the gti moldings though black bumpers and side moldings front spoiler with auxiliary driving lights that's easy for you to say full leather trim black on sorrento green tan with the aztec gold curl which we have here polished wood door inserts except real wood uh now we start clutching straws a little illuminated vanity mirrors yep there we go electric for windows that's good thing remote control central looking quite impressive in 1992 leather trimmed steering wheel very nice uh additional carpet mats four speaker clarion pc300 stereo radio cassette still here uh courtesy light delay when you shut the door and there's one option on this car one and only option because i loaded it with everything else they could think of and that is the full sliding sunroof which someone optioned on this car giving a total price of 12 836 pounds plus the sunroof so this car would have been over 13 000 pounds new so as i say about 27 grand which puts it in the territory of a nice audi a1 um a smart mini in today's world a luxury super mini is a thing so you can downsize from your large car to a small car and not feel like being short-changed but in the early 90s that really wasn't the thing this is the smallest car in the peugeot lineup but with the most trim virtually of anything this is quite fantastic let's have a quick look around and see what we've got well let's start on the doors well this is i think it's vinyl i don't think this is a leather door card i think it's like a leather effect vinyl door card all very very square and angular got a big chunky door pull matching square and angular door handle to open it i don't know if this would have been two colors originally or if i've just faded to different shades of brown over the years i think look at this kind of insert in the door pool these were actually intended to be two different shades then we've got a big square door speaker as well so everything is just chunky squares and above that we've got our remote um handle thingy for twisting the door mirror outside we've got on both sides of the car so proper luxury down the bottom we've got a fairly good sized door bin which is yeah quite unusual in the early 90s and mounted in the front of that quite cleverly positioned actually down here just where your hand kind of falls naturally we've got the two electric uh window switches just on the passenger side obviously but interestingly uh here this little round circle this is the blank for where the manual keep fit windows would have been if you're a lower spec car moving across to the dashboard there are lots of squares triangles angles um yeah you can see why they chose the aztec name for the some of the special editions because it just looks like an aztec pyramid with all the blockiness going on a big square instrument pinnacle a big triangle thing going on here and a big sort of slopey area into a trough above the glovebox just there so you can have a soup du jour with a straw on the move no cup holder but you can have some hot chocolate or a soup from from over here and uh no actual good cup holder no cup holders at all and the tea shelf is well fairly minimal as well if i acquire a cup you can maybe balance something in your super trough uh but it's not really advisable there's just about one not really room to put anything on there there's a large flat area here so small uh operatives perhaps and small cake items but a confectionary can be balanced on here when driving but you know nothing really for your cup this is a very poor shot i'm going to give this like i can sell one because you've got the super trough otherwise it'd be a zero very poor t-shirt score now looking at this kind of big square and angular instrument pinnacle this triangular bit here it looks like the building's in the set of blade runners they're flying across the city it's uh yeah these big they could be the big exhaust vents from the side of a massive building uh just a massive flying car city going on so let's have a look around and see what we've got first of all the instrument pinnacle as i say it's a big square thing jutting out of the dashboard with this plateau in front of it and we've got a lot of stuff going on inside the dial area itself in the center we've got the two main dials of speedo and rev counter going up to 145 miles an hour a car which doesn't go that fast and we've got the uh avilia rev counter redlining at six thousand going all the way up to eight in the end and at either end we've got vertically mounted sweepy dials on the left-hand side oil and fuel on the right-hand side water temperature and oil temperature and down the center we've got all our other warning lights now for a car of the 90s and bear in mind this is the absolute pinnacle of the range there's a lot of warning lights just there so you can really take your pick from what you want to be warned about to the right of that we've got one of the four big square very adjustable air vents rocks out on its little pivot to give you forward blowage and down below that we've got a big pistol pocket open storage area for stuff very practical and to the left of that we've got a blanking triangle which looks like it should do something but it doesn't and just towards you from that with another larger plate with a little finger touch thingy push that spring open you've got one of those kind of velvety soft touch areas with a coin slot holder of course a little lower area for putting i don't know credit cards make up tiny items that you don't rattling around the dashboard that's quite a useful little thing that let's get back to the uh in front of the driver area we have our large speedo steering wheel plateau which we can put small items in okay but below the plateau which we won't use with balancing phones on because that is very dangerous they're both nice round drums uh plastic at the bottom rubberized at the top for for tactility um the one on the right is for your front and rear wipers and the one on your left is indicators lights and most importantly horn blimey that's a horn and a half that is a horn from a much bigger car this car is clearly punching above its weight in in terms of hornage wow i'm still slightly shaken by that i wasn't expecting that at all and then we have the nice leather rimmed steering wheel i talked about in the brochure this feels lovely this car has only got 19 and a half thousand miles on it so it's um still feels kind of fresh and unworn and this kind of gti esque center section makes the whole thing feel very rally sporty you look down at the auto and that whole illusion goes away completely we'll just keep focusing on the funky steering wheel and 140 mile an hour speed over there that does feel really good in the end that's a really nice grippy wheel it feels perfect actually well done peugeot now over to the left we've got all our column of stuff first of all two more big vents same as on the sides below which are three giant dials for controlling your airflow direction span speed temperature the usual goblins no air conditioning in this car sadly so just the three dials there below which we've got a panel with three chunky buttons i love these kind of textured half light half texture circular end of a oil drum button uh motif they have going on here hazard lights wrist green heater fog lights so we can uh have fog lights and rescue history how the lights working they look look very cool underneath which we've got ash tray because obviously it's french it's kind of a big ash tray with the 12-volt socket inside the foldy outfit a little digital clock and underneath that the radio they mentioned in the brochure they love this i do love an 80s and 90s cassette radio they look so cool this is the clarion pc300 and it's peugeot branded so you can tell it came with the car even if you didn't know the the history of this particular one there are four speakers obviously there's two in the front doors and there's two in the sea posts as well so pretty decent sound four speaker sound was again quite a big deal you forget how stuff has moved on so rapidly from the early 90s when a four-speaker stereo was still you know a talking point now below that we've got what looks like it should be a folding out opening area or a cubby hole or something but it's not it's just a sculpted bit of plastic and a little tray just small enough not to put anything in and then the gear shift a uh auto box park reverse neutral and then four three two one it's just numbers it's not got the whole drive one two three or anything uh yeah then finally we've got up here in the in the ceiling i'll tilt slide sunroof the one option available on this model so yeah very exciting to have that literally to open it's about three degrees outside right let's have a quick look at the back of this thing these seats do flip forward in quite an interesting manner so uh they give you a lot of access to climb into the car for quite cleverly hinged once they're back it's all a little bit tighter on your knees and your foot room is not that impressive either but you've got fairly good arm space if there's any two of you set in the back it feels like two big bucket seats because these seats do kind of tip and fold forward to make lots of space in the boot however if there are three seat belts and if there are three of you it would be a bit cramped uh you've got a big buckety pocket thing on either side of the car plus a little lash tray in both sides as well um let's say three seat belts speakers in the seat post poppy outside open windows and grab handles so it's not exactly all doom and gloom in here and you have got this lovely leather as well so it's really really comfortable feels a bit cold at first but assume it gets nice once you're in the car and of course the headroom because the peugeot 205 is quite a square blocky shape headroom is fairly decent in here despite the sunroof taking sort of that much out of the top now this is an impressively sized boot for a superman even by today's standard so going back to 1980s when this car was launched this is huge it's quite impressive and you really could take anything you wanted to the dump if you're trying to dispose of a uh a business rival this could be done quite uh quite effectively even in the 205 they really were covering every base and as i mentioned the seats do fold 50 50 so you can make it to a massive area i've got a little courtesy light over there because this is the gentry it's all carpeted in this lovely tan carpet which matches the interior of the car makes the whole thing just feel very luxurious and they give the car an order of hush when you're on the road as well spare wheel isn't underneath the carpet it's slung underneath the car as they were on peugeots of this era so making sure that if you do get a puncher it will be in the rain it will be dirty and muddy so it's even less pleasant changing the spill wheel than it would have been otherwise thanks peugeot right let's go for a drive you can tell this is a true retro because there's no any kind of handles for closing the boot now that 1.9 liter engine even though it is detuned does give this car a fair bit of poke i know i always rag on autos as being sluggish and slow but with that much power on such a tiny car this is actually uh pretty decent off the line because don't forget 104 horsepower 105 horsepower in a car this tiny in this light it's still pretty good 28 years on that's not bad going the car handles nicely as well perjure 205's always handle really well even in the most basic form now the gti did get a bit of an upright in the in the uh the front suspension setup which sadly this car didn't get it's still got the standard some running setup but that does mean it's more comfortable than the slightly harder sprung harder running gti which is a good thing for the nature of the car don't forget this is all about luxury comfort enjoying the drive it's meant to be effortless that's why big engine detuned automatic gearbox power steering power brakes this is as comfy and nice and luxury as you're gonna get in a 205 and it looks good i mean you wouldn't think a pale gold 205 would be a good looking car but this actually does look pretty decent doesn't there is a bit of a not a misnomer exactly but a lot of people do seem to think that 205 was actually styled by opinion farina but it wasn't only the convertible was converted or restyled by pininfarina the actual original styling of the car was all in-house it was done by a guy called gerald walter who was one of peugeot's own in-house designers looking around this pretty amazing interior that was also one of motoring designs great that was paul brack who you may have heard of as he designed an awful lot of the best mercedes of the 20th century among many other things a lot of nice peugeots as well so he was involved in that so some big names letting a lot of weight to this beautiful interior and exterior the car does cruise very nicely doing 40 miles an hour two and a half thousand rpm just ticking over with the auto box doing its thing power steering is very light actually on this it's kind of car you wouldn't necessarily think you needed power steering on but nonetheless it does have it you do feel like you're sitting a little bit high in it to be honest and there's no way of adjusting the seats down that i've found to make it sit any lower but the seats are so comfy these are proper armchairs but if there's such a thing as a sports armchair this would be it we go hit 45 miles an hour and the gear has just flipped up one more ratio so i guess we're in fourth now described in the brochure as a powerful automatic transmission i'm not quite sure how automatic is powerful but this one is apparently so yay go you this car is currently for sale at stone cold classics at router and kent check out the website in the link in the description below for more details because it is pretty impressive and they've got some amazing stuff for sale down there as well all of which i would love to take home but i can't a bit of background on the 205 itself peugeot needed to replace the 104 which was dating back to the early 70s looking very much long in the tooth the persho weren't really known as masters of the small car in 1978 they took over chrysler europe which contained the roots group so they got things like the simca 1100 and the hillman imp so a lot of small car knowledge know-how packaging uh handling information so they really kind of stepped up their game instantly one fell swoop just with that quick takeover and so when the 205 came along they use all that knowledge all the information the styling design ideas that would have gone into the new simcas hillman's other roots cars and put it into this one instead so notably the peugeot 309 was going to be was it a tall but i think it was a tall but told that arizona i think it was going to be called well simca arizona certainly wasn't going to be a peugeot but after the takeover they took the completed car and converted it into peugeot which is why it kind of doesn't really fit in the styling and sizing characteristics of the rest of the range lots of turns lock to lock rolls a bit through the corner what a funnel car so when the car was launched it really was a hit it was massively popular with buyers and in 1983 the year of its launch it actually won what cars european car of the year koti as they call it so yeah why do we even have a gentry in the first place well as i say at the beginning it was a 600 car order for the japanese market but that order got cancelled and uh the cards have already been built though so what were they gonna do with them so uh lucky us we got them now i don't know how many are left i couldn't find survival figures but with only 600 to start with and not that many 205s left on the road i can't imagine there are more than well single or double figures at best i'm searching the forums i found one or two others which had been modified a few years ago the interiors were nowhere near as nice as this the carpets were worn the obviously 205 was rusted like crazy this one though is absolutely immaculate it came from northern ireland as you might better tell from the number plate less than 20 000 miles no idea how it was used so sparingly for 28 years but wow what an amazing car but this is now a segment which is a real thing people do downsize to a1s minis um you know this is the ds line from citron all these other small cars which you know fit better in tacks and emissions and that kind of thing which is now the popular thing to do 30 odd years ago that really wasn't a thing but like any 205 it rides so nicely if this road is particularly bad along just here and even now there's just a faintest little jitter from the suspension the engine is not too the loud steering wheel feels good seats are comfy loads of headroom and incredible visibility there really is a lot to like about this car everything from the way you just sink into the seats when you climb in the relaxingness of the gold everything this is just ultimate luxury in a way i never thought possible it really is kind of a curious mix of things in the car bit gti bit high level posh car a bit of everything really and just so different i'm really enjoying driving this if i needed a very high spec comfortable everyday just cruising car this would be ideal so easy to drive as well good brakes easy auto power steering ah perfect and the lovely nimbleness the light feeling of a 205. and it just feels so so light on the road because 205 they too feel incredibly light always and this is certainly no exception it does have that wonderful 205 feeling you can just sling it into a bend and it will just grip and grip and grip because they do they're great little cars i might have almost found an automatic i don't hate wow well thank you for joining me today and it's right out in this ridiculously rare never even heard of it before peugeot 205. i hope you've enjoyed the ride i certainly have i'll open my eyes to something new and interesting if you've enjoyed this please hit like and subscribe as always that's what matters to us youtube people and look at the links in the description there's all kind of other fun stuff to do and see and play with and hit the bell notification if you'd like to see when the next one of these is coming out and uh yeah join me again soon i'm driving something completely different uh

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 15,892

Rating: 4.9334025 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, Peugeot, 205, 205 gentry, pug 205, hot hatch, super mini, luxury car, 90s car, car review, car history, road test, test drive

Id: BFzbr7R_ltc

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020