Developed under the project name M24 and launched in February 1983, the 205 used a MacPherson-strut front and torsion-bar trailing-arm rear suspension layout that Peugeot had debuted on the 305 estate. The layout was compact enough to leave the boot largely uncompromised, and good enough that the whole platform became the template for the rest of the PSA range.[1] It narrowly lost the 1984 European Car of the Year award to the Fiat Uno, but reportedly outlasted it in the market by a wide margin.
Three trims are recorded here. The 1.6 and 1.9-litre GTI, launched in 1984 and 1986 respectively, are the cars the hot-hatch reputation rests on; no torque figure or 0-100 km/h time is published in the source for either engine, so those fields are left empty rather than estimated from later road tests. The 205 Turbo 16, built in a run of exactly 200 to homologate Peugeot’s Group B rally car, is mechanically almost unrelated to the rest of the range: a mid-mounted, turbocharged, four-wheel-drive engine bolted into a 205-shaped body, making under half the power of the works rally car it existed to legalise.
Kerb weight is recorded only at generation level: the infobox gives a 740-935 kg range across the ordinary range (excluding the T16) rather than a figure for any specific trim.
