By Peter Casserly
It’s Showtime! The date is March 1975, Oil Crisis jitters have mostly abated, and enthusiastic crowds are milling around Peugeot’s Great Tan Velour Hope at the Geneva Motor Show. The handsome, stately 604 has a burbly new V6 engine, tough 504 underpinnings, and carries the hope and pride of a nation to elevate France’s car industry to one which can compete with the best of British and German luxury. How exciting to have a new Peugeot with the toughness and reliability of the 404 and 504, but in a bigger and more powerful package. Did it pan out that way? Read on. Our members put their memories to the test.
The Geneva Class of 75. Top down, left to right: Lancia Beta HPE, Renault 30, Vauxhall Chevette, Triumph TR7, Rolls-Royce Camargue, AMC Pacer, Peugeot 604
Be Careful What You Wish For: The Curious Case of the Peugeot 604
by Bruce Turner
“In 1975 Peugeot introduced the 604 sedan, a model aimed squarely at competitors from Germany and Britain; specifically the 728 BMW, S class Mercedes and the XJ6 Jaguar. It was built at Peugeot’s Sochaux plant and in Korea, by Kia up until 1981. It was a car which borrowed heavily on the engineering design and underpinnings of its earlier sibling, the 504, albeit with some improvements such as superior rear suspension damping. That said, the design transition was still something of a mixed blessing. The front brakes for example, remained as non-ventilated discs, as they had been on the 504, yet the 604 was some 340kg heavier. Having owned both models, I recall clearly that a crash stop from a relatively brisk pace was a noticeably greater challenge in the 604. The car nevertheless embodied other qualities which contemporary motoring writers rated as superior to the above-named competitors, especially ride quality and steering performance.
The Australian delivery 604 was fitted with a 2664cc V6 engine producing some 108kw, 145bhp in the old language. Most commentators I’ve read regard this output as “adequate” vis a vis the then competition. The engine was developed by the PRV consortium, a body formed in 1971 with equal investment by Peugeot, Renault and Volvo, although the engine can be traced back to a 1966 arrangement on parts manufacture between Renault and Peugeot. This setup was subsequently augmented by the participation of Volvo to form PRV. The original engine concept was apparently for a V8 but it seems that the intervention of the 1973 oil crisis put the kibosh on the V8 forever. One legacy of the proposed V8 design is that like most V8s, the 604 V6 inherited the 90 degree cylinder angle, unusual for a V6, most of which are 60 degrees. This gave rise to an issue with smooth running of the engine, evidence that you can’t just chop 2 cylinders off your V8 and expect the same plain sailing! The 90 degree crankshaft offsets meant that each 3-cylinder bank needed slightly different timing to achieve acceptably smooth running… about 2 degrees if my memory serves me correctly. A perhaps crude solution, but one that worked, as indeed it does on some motorcycle engines.
An Australian motoring journalist once described the 604 as a car ‘abandoned by the market’ and Paul Niedermeyer has dubbed it “the overachieving underachiever”. In the luxury market it was always going to be a tough task to beat the Germans and Brits at their own game. The oil crisis didn’t help, nor did the brand-new and almost as large 505, released in 1979 and regarded by many as a fresher and better value option. To interested readers, I would suggest looking at “An Afternoon like Dusk” by Richard Herriott, in 9 short chapters and available online. He makes a few very minor errors of detail, but it is generally a great read.”
Not a bad alternative to a CX
By Peter Casserly
“Aged 20, I had my heart set on a Citroen CX. I was about to go to The Dark Side. These were all Pallas cars with the C-Matic 3 speed gearbox and the 2400 engine, from memory.
I drove a dark blue car in Salter Point. Horrid. The car, I mean. It wasn’t a great example, but the truth also was I hadn’t switched my brain around to the car, either. And French cars require this, which is why I love them.
The C-Matic was a semi-automatic gearbox with a conventional H-shift pattern. You simply accelerated gently from standstill, and usually in 2nd, then lifted your foot from the throttle whilst tipping the lever into top gear. Once all done, get back on the throttle. It was all very serene, as soon as I trained my left foot not to go looking for the clutch pedal.
I drove that blue car, then a beautiful white one with an unforgiveable black plastic bonnet scoop, then a nice red one with the gloss paint on the turn, then a nice green one whose sellers I didn’t trust, then another nice green one with badly re-installed door rubbers. The right one will come along soon.
Then I noticed a green 604 for sale at John Hughes. On the test drive, I was surprised to hear the same Italianate burble from the exhaust that I so admired In Bruce Turner’s car. Why the surprise? Because Bruce’s car was a private import from the UK. It had a manual gearbox unavailable in Australia, no emission control equipment and a conspicuously rorty engine and exhaust note. I just assumed Australian cars wouldn’t have that. But they did, if not quite so overtly. Driving through multi-level carparks with the windows down was to become my new hobby.
This car had no compromises. It was in nice condition and well priced. I was thoroughly seduced by its fine ride, air-conditioning, leather seats, sunroof and power steering.
Other little jewel-like things began to work their charm in fresh ownership’s acquaintance and discovery. The orange mist which descended through the car at nightfall was proper expensive, just like a BMW’s. The non-parallel sweep of the parallel windscreen wipers were just like those found in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class limo. Oh wow… and all for just $8,990.
The rear seat was probably the most sofa-like I’ve ever experienced. I wish I could have driven from there. I never got to experience it as a passenger. My addled young man’s brain was overjoyed at the ingenious, rather than logical, placement of the interior switches. Steve Cropley of WHEELS Magazine described it precisely so in his February 1978 road test.
A little hiss sounded throughout the car as the vacuum-operated central locking locked and unlocked the doors in stealthy near-unison. It was probably the sound of a leak in the system.
Road-holding on its skinny 175 Michelin XZXs was amazing. A young passenger from Yornup and I marvelled at how it kept building speed between Yornup and Bridgetown one late afternoon all the way up to 160 km/h. It really was a ‘Sweet-natured big car’, just like England’s CAR Magazine said. In their ‘The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly’ glossary that appeared in the back pages of every issue for decades, they described the 604 in the ‘Interesting’ section, as “Peugeot’s sweet-natured big car, with lots of intermittently working luxury”.
How dare they. But I was starting to suspect they were onto something. One afternoon in the middle of Fremantle, the water pump blew. The $600 replacement bill was mountainous.
6ZL732 was starting to prove difficult to keep in tune. There was a Peugeot workshop that acquired a name for itself by replacing the apparently irksome carburettor set-up with a more elegant Weber unit. I commissioned the work. He did away with the emission controls, too, as proved by the exhaust putty wedged into the end of a no-longer connected breather pipe. The experience made me forever shy of modifying.
If all this wasn’t enough, the front MacPherson struts were failing. My parents begged me to sell the car and buy a Holden. A man named Beaver Grime arrived at our home for a test drive. We headed along Marmion Street from Melville all the way to John Curtin High School.
Just beside East Fremantle Football Oval was a gentle rise and fall in the road. The 604 sailed majestically over the rise with its front wheels leaving the ground.
Back home in the lounge room, crafty old Beaver scratched his beard for a bit and drawled, “The front shockies are buggered… I’ll give you six”.
I accepted. Six months of ownership came to a close. Mum and Dad gave me an interest-free loan, and I bought a Commodore V8.
Like all my cars, the 604 remained unnamed. I just call my cars by what they were, like The Golf, The Torana, or The 604. I do know he was a boy car, though, and a haughty one. And, Gosh Darn, was he a smooth talker. Stayed in my brain, this one did.”
In 1985, after a 10 year production run of 153,000 cars, it was time to bring Peugeot’s V6 limo chapter to a close.
Toward the end of its life, the 604 only became tastier. The carburetted, single-specification 604 SL swotted along for the first few years, able to trade on quite favourable press reviews, innate handsomeness and newness. In time, along came Turbo Diesels and the 604TI with fuel injection. In 1981, with the pesky newborn sibling 505 halving its sales, the TI donned a set of Michelin TRX wheels and tyres to become the STI. Then, with just two more years to run, a beautiful 604 GTI with a now 2.8 litre engine and swathes of frosty blue velour came out. You’d cherish the car in Peugeot’s collection. It would be the rarest of all factory 604s.
Things just didn’t go right. How could Citroen sell eight times as many CXs? The Oil Crisis had more of an effect than it should have. In 1979, the 505 was newer, too good, and too close. Perhaps the time will come to try again, and not with a car that looks too much like something else in the range. And if we’re talking Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, developing a replacement car side by side with a replacement for the Citroen CX and allowing each to share baseline engineering hardpoints will surely only serve to give both cars a shot at excellence and runaway success. Yes. Let’s try that. In a little while.