The Peugeot PSE (Peugeot Sport Engineered) performance badge is one of the more rare-groove sporty sub-brands out there right now, with only one model – the flawed but likeable 508 PSE – wearing its signature acid green flashes. According to Peugeot CEO Linda Jackson, it’s likely to stay that way for the foreseeable.
Car Throttle joined Jackson for a roundtable interview at the 6 Hours of Imola, the second round of this year’s World Endurance Championship, where Peugeot’s newly updated 9X8 LMH racer was making its competitive debut. While most brands competing there are either out-and-out performance manufacturers, like Lamborghini and Ferrari, or produce a range of performance cars, like BMW and Toyota, Peugeot remains an outlier, with the 508 PSE its only explicit road-going link to the WEC programme.
Peugeot 508 PSE – front
“We thought about it,” said Jackson when asked if there had been any plans for other PSE-badged cars to sit alongside the 508, which originally launched in 2020. “But the prioritisation came into play, and this was all about electrification… By the end of this year, every [Peugeot] model will have an electric version, and you have to make these priorities.”
Jackson openly told us that Peugeot is no longer a performance brand, but that it remains committed to its WEC effort. “[Motorsport] is two things for me,” she said. “It’s a brilliant vector for talking about Peugeot around the world… and it’s a little bit like a laboratory — you can test things, even down to design. We can develop suspension, hybridisation, aerodynamics.”
Peugeot 508 PSE – rear, dynamic
She went on to say the company is “debating” the need for a future road car to link directly to the WEC programme once the current 508 reaches the end of its life: “Do we need that, or do we need more to take the technology and be able to put it on a wider range of cars?” The 508 PSE should be around for a few years at least, as it’s only just undergone a mid-life facelift.
Several of Peugeot’s smaller electric models are based on Stellantis’ e-CMP platform. A number of performance-biased EVs will soon launch on the same underpinnings, most notably the Abarth 600e, Alfa Romeo Junior Veloce and Lancia Ypsilon HF, all of which share the setup of 237bhp and a mechanical limited-slip diff. Surely the same package would slot ever so sweetly into an e-208? Jackson said that “there’s nothing certain” on that front, but didn’t rule it out entirely.
Peugeot 9X8 at the 2024 6 Hours of Imola
Jackson raised a tiny amount of hope for another performance Peugeot last year when she told Top Gear that, theoretically, if someone approached Peugeot with a blank cheque, it could build them a roadgoing version of the 9X8 racer. Unsurprisingly, though, Jackson says “we didn’t get anybody” taking the company up on the offer.
We shouldn’t hold our breaths, then, for any hot hatches or other performance cars from Peugeot in the short term, and if they do ever emerge, they’ll almost certainly be fully electric. As we recently found out, though, even some of the brand’s ‘regular’ cars are still very capable of raising a smile.
