Guest contributor: Julien Thiebaud on the Peugeot 205 Rallye Club de France’s 2013 annual meet

About a month ago I traveled back to Europe to visit my family. Like me, my sister happens to be a gearhead and owns a pristine Peugeot 205 Rallye (two of which I’ve owned myself back in the day), which my brother-in-law rebuilt from the ground up a few years back. She usually agrees to let me use the car as my daily driver during my stays in France— a treat since the car, waiting to have its original matching number engine rebuilt, has a genuine Group N rally spec motor in it (think about 130 hp, an under-1500 lbs curb weight, and a short-ratio gearbox). During my latest stay he invited me to join him for the Peugeot 205 Rallye Club de France annual meet in the commune of Sochaux, the birthplace of Peugeot.

We attended day one of the three-day event, a welcome party for the “Rallye” owners who had made the trip from near and far in their beloved rides. These guys came from every single part of France, Switzerland, Germany, etc… and two Scottish warriors even made the trip in their short-geared Rallye (topping out at 100 mph) from Edinburgh
(= L-O-U-D!)!

I was amazed at how many people were still into the little Peugeot from my teen years. About 70 mint cars showed up the first day and even more the next for the de rigueur tour of the Peugeot Museum.

A lot of awesome and passionate people came out that night, fueled by the crazy heavy food of my home region— think entire wheels of Comté cheese, Sauerkraut Comté and local Montbéliard sausage quiches, and of course, the local liquors with which you could, potentially, use to pour in the Rallyes’ tank and fire them up! A fantastic time.