THE PEUGEOT 1007

There’s nothing more frustrating than a good idea badly executed. Actually, that’s not true. There are many things more frustrating than a good idea badly executed. Cancelled trains, for example. Or the futility of all human endeavour on this ultimately doomed planet. But yeah, good idea badly executed, that’s annoying too.

Take the Peugeot 1007. The concept was sound: by replacing conventional doors with a pair of huge sliding panels, it promised to be a city car to unlock the tiniest of city parking spaces.

And the 1007 – to be pronounced “one-thousand-and-seven” rather than “one double-oh-seven”, otherwise a lawyer from the Bond franchise would be round to box your ears – did indeed make it a cinch to get in or out without dinging a neighbouring car, even when parked in the tightest of spots. (It was unclear what the driver of the hinge-doored neighbouring car was supposed to do when they discovered a 1007 parked three inches away. Presumably 1007s were the most dented cars on the road.)

The trouble came after you’d smugly slipped into your 1007… and then had to drive it somewhere. Because that was when you discovered the weight added by those vast, powered, sliding doors meant the 1007 boasted the approximate density of a collapsed star. Acceleration could be described as ‘absent’. Tectonic plates have changed course with more alacrity.

Peugeot reckoned it’d sell 17,000 annually in the UK. It shifted barely 8,000 in total, canning the 1007 after just three years.

Sliding doors on a city car? Not worth the weight.