There’s only so much one can learn about cars by reading car magazines. Though that wasn’t immediately obvious to me in my early driving days. Indeed, not long after I started writing for the buff books in the late 1980s, ahead of getting assigned my first actual review (as opposed to lighthearted feature) for Automobile Magazine, I had to supply its editor, David E. Davis, Jr., and his second-in-command, Jean Jennings (née Leinert, née Lindamood,) with a list of cars I had driven to date. Around this time, upon my first visit to the magazine’s HQ, a contingent of staffers met me at the Detroit airport. Jean, along with editors John Phillips, Jon Stein, and Kevin Smith arrived to collect me in a Sterling 825 with a manual transmission and asked me to drive it to the office in Ann Arbor, while they studied my driving closely.
The pop driving quiz went ok, but that’s another story.
Scared, befuddled, and mildly indignant, I compiled the car list. I worried: Would my fraudulence as a knower of cars reveal itself? Fortunately, the honest tally of machines I’d crossed paths with was sufficiently oddball and varied for Jean and David E.—two hard-asses with occasional hearts of gold. My reviews were allowed to go forward.
For the record, my experience at the time already included a couple of Volvo 122S wagons, a 144 and a 164, a Studebaker Lark, a Rambler American, various Beetles and Microbuses, an automatic Chevette, a Buick GS 455 convertible, plus a bunch of clapped-out Darts, Valiants, Bel Airs, and Skylarks. Also under my belt I had several old MGs and Triumphs, a Pontiac Grand Am, and a Lotus Elan, not to mention a host of 10- and 15-year-old Opels. I rounded things out with Fords Fairlane, Capri, Mustang, Maverick, Pinto, and Anglia, and—in keeping with the Anglia’s small and British theme—a 1958 Standard (Triumph) 10 sedan, which must’ve caught their eye, especially when counterposed against two exotics I’d managed to steer around northern New Jersey without incident: a Fiat Dino coupe and an Alfa Romeo Montreal. Oh, and my parents’ Saabs, 99, 900, and 9000 Turbo.
All that said, my exposure to the world’s automobiles was still limited and my opinions about cars were limited to the received beliefs of others whom I read religiously in car magazines. I had an occasional difference of opinion, but my contrarian views were boxed in by a limited frame of reference.
Life is like that—you don’t know what you don’t know when you don’t know it. Or until you find out you didn’t know it but should have. Yet you might still have a strong opinion, which limited hands-on knowledge might erroneously contour into a wrongheaded one, unsupported by the facts.
So, the whole process of driving a lot of new cars to get my bearings was mission-critical, in my view, but not only that. It was also an exciting adjunct and occasional relief from the painful process of trying to assemble written thoughts in a coherent, accurate, and evocative fashion, to distill the essence of each car down in a way that was understandable and true.
Which brings me to 1986 and the first of a parade of test cars that would pass through my hands. A cornucopia of riches, it seemed, making the fact that I could barely afford a car of my own more tolerable. I remember them well. Range Rovers, four-wheel-drive Vanagons, Mercury Tracer wagon, Jaguar XJs and XJ-Ss, Alfas, Maserati BiTurbo, Merkur XR4Ti, a Callaway Corvette. And all manner of Buick, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Cadillac, Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissans, BMWs, Sterling, Saab, Volvo, and—the topic of today’s lesson—Peugeot.
To be fair, in those days, just about any new car impressed me at least a little. Fuel injection had become a thing and performance was returning to the road. The Lotus Esprit Turbo blew my mind, as did BMW’s E30 M3. Testing cars sure beat law school. But, surprisingly, I was most captivated by Peugeots, in specific the 505s that comprised the entirety of the brand’s U.S. lineup at the time.
It started slowly, the moment I first set out in a press loaner. While noting that it didn’t seem as hewn from stone as a W123 Mercedes or Volvo, the Peugeot 505’s comfortable seats impressed instantly. An almost magical combination of ride and handling helped it outstrip either of these European worthies. With steering light but direct and full of feel and a geometry built for instant turn-in. Allied to the 505’s uncanny ability to soak up bumps and road irregularities, it felt almost otherworldly. Its subtle Pininfarina lines looked proper, handsome, and sporty. Why didn’t anyone in the press summon up any more than grudging respect for these sublime cars which so clearly deserved more? Why was one left with the sense that buying one would be a proposition not only eccentric but also one so risky that financial ruin could well await new owners?
So impressed was I by the 505 (and so risk-tolerant), that when I started making a little bit of money in my other job, managing rock bands, I decided to put this opinion to the test. I dipped my toe into an industry convention I had learned about: the press fleet sale. That’s where a car that’s been pulled from company-owned service illuminating journalists or accommodating celebrities and other chosen dignitaries gets sold off at a steep discount. The numbers sound funny today, but in 1987 I bought a top-of-the-line V-6 505 STX with 6200 miles on it for around $6500, or less than half its list price of $17,000. To sum up, it was great and entirely reliable. I put about 30,000 miles on it before selling it to my friend, Bill Krauss. He brought it to San Francisco (and later L.A.) when he moved there, and when he sold it many years later, with 190,000 miles, the sun-baked thing with no working electric windows switches still ran alright and sported its original clutch. That was a miracle of sorts, given those San Francisco hills, and a testament to regular oil changes and my friend’s third pedal work.
So that brings us back to this 1985 505DL wagon, which I bought in May. I’d always admired them and came close to buying a new one in 1992, when Peugeot pulled out of the U.S. market and a brand-new leftover SW8 eight-seat wagon could be had at my local dealer for $10,000. I instead picked up a half-price 405Mi16, another remarkably sporting and cosseting machine that shocked me with its awesomeness when I first drove one.
So good was the Mi16 that Nissan copied it with the excellent and rarely lamented Infiniti G20. But unlike the Japanese take, the French original was let down by its makers’ late-1980s experiments in how cheaply it could get away with making plastic interior trim. Sadly, my Mi16 pretty much self-destructed at about 60,000 miles, though a flash flood in an outdoor NYC parking garage hadn’t helped matters one bit.
Six months ago, when this remarkably original French-market 505 eight-seat wagon turned up in British Columbia (details in last month’s PCC #17) I just had to get it for Octane Film Cars. Sure, we already have a German market 1983 505GL sedan on our roster, but I figured there ought to be a place for this delightful unicorn in some film or TV series sometime soon.
At least that’s the plan. As the boss, sometimes you have to step out and make the tough executive calls. For, as I like to say to my outstanding but occasionally bewildered co-workers: There may be no “I” in Team. But there is “me.”
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A man of many pursuits (rock band manager, automotive journalist, concours judge, purveyor of picture cars for film and TV), Jamie Kitman lives and breathes vintage machines. His curious taste for interesting, oddball, and under-appreciated classics—which traffic through his Nyack, New York warehouse—promises us an unending stream of delightful cars to discuss. For more Picture Car Confidential columns, click here. Follow Jamie Kitman on Instagram at @commodorehornblow; follow Octane Film Cars @octanefilmcars and at www.octanefilmcars.com.
