Unexceptional Classifieds: Peugeot 505 SRD

by Antony Ingram

18 November 2022 2 min read

Price: £5250
Mileage: 91,000
Condition: Ready to use
Advert: eBay

Everyone remembers the Peugeot 205, but can you remember what cars Peugeot sold alongside it?

How much is your car to insure? Find out in four easy steps.

Get a quote

That probably made you pause for a second, unless you’re a French car connoisseur. The small hatch tends to dominate 1980s Peugeot discourse in a way you don’t really get with other carmakers – nobody would have trouble naming all the Fords sold alongside the Mk2 Fiesta, or rattling off Citroën’s wildly diverse range of 40-odd years ago.

Given you’ve clicked on this page at least one of them should be obvious, but to briefly fill you in on a few others, we had the 104 below the 205, then the 305 and later 309 above it, the 604 a few layers above that (later the 605, as the 205 continued into the 1990s) and a handful of light commercial vehicles.

The missing one is of course the Peugeot 505, which was phased out in favour of the 405, though like so many old Peugeots, did embark on a kind of extended gap year in various far-flung locations, built under licence by companies you’ve likely never heard of.

It also joined the 504 on the African continent as a kind of everlasting, perpetually-repairable workhorse used by people who’ve probably never even seen an actual Peugeot dealership but really know how to wield a hammer.

Despite this reputation for longevity, the Peugeot 505 has become wildly uncommon in the UK, likely a combination of general disinterest and the one thing it’s unlikely to do in Morocco, which is rust. Which makes finding cars like this 1987 505 SRD turbodiesel something of a treat.

The seller reckons it’s one of only three SRDs remaining, and while it’s not a show car, the seller also claims it’s never needed attention to the sills or wheel arches, so what you see is what Peugeot put on the car originally. While its 2021 MOT had plenty of advisories (and the year’s ticket it has at the moment has a few more), the absence of notes about body corrosion is reassuring.

A recent mechanical overhaul and service (including plenty of brake work and even some attention to the turbo) should give it life for many more years too, and that 2.5-litre turbodiesel (93bhp in this instance) should go on forever if looked after.

This then looks like the ideal car to buy, cherish, and tidy up – while with 91,000 on the clock, it’s not too pristine or original to avoid using either. Bring it to shows – the Festival of the Unexceptional, ideally – and remind people that Peugeot’s 1980s range wasn’t all about the 205.