As the Peugeot stand at the Paris Mondial made perfectly clear, there was just one star among the many cars on display at France’s leading motor show and it was a compact MPV, the 1007.
This issue of Auto & Design, discusses the salient features of this new model’s genesis and development with those responsible, including, in the case of the exterior design, Pininfarina. For Gérard Welter, Director of the Peugeot Style Centre, the 1007 “is a car that arouses curiosity and excites the imagination of observers. More importantly, it is a response to growing public demand for more and more innovative concepts”.
In response to that demand, Pininfarina went all out for originality, right from the start, identifying the sleek arrow motif as the core theme to develop around the car’s unusual architecture that is a consequence of its single sliding door. “The idea that struck us during the presentation in Spring 2000”, explains Aude Brille, Peugeot’s Project Manager of the 1007, “was to base the entire mass of the car on that arrow shape. We then developed the design on that basis, putting our greatest effort into imposing a characteristically Peugeot look on the front of the car”.
“ The constraints imposed by the door mechanism, which affected most of the body”, explains Lorenzo Ramaciotti, Vice President of Pininfarina Design “were transformed into a design motif that helped to characterise the sides”.
Their efforts were certainly crowned with success, since the 1007 presents one of the most interesting body designs in its class.
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 149
