Yesterday while gobbling noodles with my pal Joel at Platform Garage, we were talking about knocking on peoples doors to talk to strangers about their cars. I recalled a story about a Peugeot 505 James talked me out of buying. Joel had no idea what a Peugeot 505 was. Later that evening I spotted one at the local grocery store, and texted him some pics. So let's start there today!
The peugeot 505 was a front engined, rear wheel drive Peugeot designed to replace the road calming Peugeot 504. A well executed sedan, they were sold in North America during the European invasion era. Peugeot, Renault, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Skoda, Innocenti, Yugo and a few others saw the success of BMW, Porsche and Mercedes. When the Oil embargo hit, it was their time to shine in the American market, each making efforts to offer high quality, low consumption vehicles. This is one of the vehicles that came over. 90% of the time you'll find sedans. The wagon is the next most common in 2WD, but there is a rare 4WD wagon, pictured below.
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Rare 505 4x4 wagon produced by Dangel.[/caption]
It wasn't until digging into photos for this article I ever heard of a 505 Coupe/Convertible. I honestly have no information of these. Most of the photos seem near-production concept.
These Peugeot's reminded me of another desirable, plain and forgotten RWD sedan/coupe combo. The original Mazda 626 was sold both as a 4 door sedan, and a 2-door pillarless hardtop. This was during the era where no B-pillar was still considered structurally sound enough for sale to the public.
Additionally I found an early, maybe Euro only? Nose that has a strange drop hood and grill I hadn't seen before.
There's a string of more design similar cars of the Era like the Toyota MX63 Cressida, but I got a bit distracted with some drawings.
Today's quick sketches.
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Using 'banding' to offer surface tension.[/caption]
Additionally, I'd been tossing a little version of these wheels in most of my drawings as they were stylish and easy to draw. I decided to render them today, as it'd been a long time since I'd drawn and rendered a wheel from scratch.
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SpeedHero TR1S[/caption]
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