Peugeot Once Built A Hot Hatch With Sliding Doors, And It Was So Weird

Now, the Peugeot 1007 isn’t a car we’d ever consider to be anywhere in the realm of ‘hot’, not even remotely good. Outright strange, we’ll give it.

With its sliding doors and attempts at being a pint-sized MPV, the 1007 certainly lives long in the memory as a unique thing. So much so, we even stuck it on a list of France’s strangest cars not too long ago.

No doubt, though, with its weedy 1.4-litre engines and weight brought on by its unconventional method of entry made it was a slow, slow thing. At most, you could get it with 111bhp that could take it from 0-62mph in about 11 seconds. Wow.

The car ultimately proved a commercial failure, selling just 8000 of them in the UK in a three-year production run. Could a hot version have turned those fortunes? Probably not, but Peugeot toyed with the idea anyway.

Ah, yes, a Peugeot 1007 RC Concept existed in 2004. At the time, RC was the moniker the French manufacturer applied to the car we knew in the UK as the 206 GTI, so you can get a bit of an idea of how the 1007 was pitched.

Gone was the 1.4-litre four-cylinder, in its place a larger 1.6-litre engine producing all of… 138bhp. In theory, quite a hilarious amount for a car the size of a shoe, but probably less appealing when you consider the near-1.3-tonne weight figure.

To add to its sportiness, the 1007 RC also gained a second exhaust exit, a comical rear spoiler adorned across the back of it and a set of Hot Wheels-esque 18-inch alloy wheels. In a bid to appeal to the youth, it also lost its roof rails and gained a honeycomb grille, as well as a load of leather and Alcantara inside for luxury, or something.

Honestly, we don’t know how close the Peugeot 1007 RC came to production, as any sort of media attention it got on its reveal quickly diminished. Little information exists on the car, and all we can really say is that history has forgotten it. It’s probably best we leave it that way.