Myth Buster
Debunking the most common old wives’ tales
Peugeot 405
1 THE SALOONS WERE ALL FOUR-DOORS
All booted 405s had four doors, right? Well, not quite. In an attempt to boost American sales, French coachbuilder, Heuliez, created a running two-door coupé version (above) in 1987, showing off different styling on each side. It never went into production, but survives today in the Musée de l’Aventure and is occasionally used on events. The mid-engined Dakar and Pikes Peak rally 405s were two-doors, too, albeit slightly quicker…
2 THE Mi-16 ENGINE WAS DERIVED FROM THE PIKES PEAK 405
Yes – and no. Finnish rally star Ari Vatanen’s record-breaking drive of a Peugeot 405 Turbo 16 up Pikes Peak hill-climb in Colorado, USA, in 1988 generated a lot of publicity for Peugeot, which happily played up the links between rally car and road car. Both cars used XU engines, but the Pikes Peak car’s motor began life as the 1775cc Group B rally XU8T, intended for the 205 Turbo 16, which used the stronger 1905cc XUD block. Peugeot took the engine up to 1905cc, but while lessons learned in Colorado went into the Mi-16’s naturally-aspirated XU9J4, they were some way removed from each other technically.
3 ‘Mi-16’ DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING
Au contraire. The ‘16’ bit is easy enough to fathom (the engine’s number of valves), but some believe that ‘Mi’ stands for ‘multipoint Injection’ or ‘Motronicinjected’. There’s another view that it’s a reference to ‘Motorsport’, as with BMW’s M-division. However, The Peugeot Adventure, a book that Peugeot itself published during the 1990s, reveals that it actually stands for ‘Multi-injection 16 valves’. So now you know. Officially.
Richard Gunn