Dan Trent: Peugeot 106 Rallye – Bare bones French hot hatch justified as a sure fire investment hit?

This week's is no exception, though it's possible a Peugeot 106 Rallye might just still be in the realms of the affordable and usable, given the one I've found is up for £3,995 and has over 100,000 miles on the clock. The latter is important, given one could use it without being too squeamish about extra numbers on the odometer going in inverse proportion to the retained value. 

No such luxury will be available to the person who just spent over £30,000 on an immaculate 205 GTI 1.9. Sure, they'll have the satisfaction of having one of the nicest examples around. But every additional mile to the 7,986 it was sold with is going to prompt a grimace. 

That kind of money for a Peugeot hot hatch is, of course, exceptional. But it points to where the market is heading for such cars as rose tinted nostalgia rapidly overtakes the supply of decent cars. To spot the next opportunity you need to move on a few years. Nearly a decade in fact. Peugeot 106 Rallyes come up for sale fairly frequently but the nature of these cars means many have led very hard lives indeed. 

Little wonder; the original 1.3-litre screamer was a proper lightweight homologation special, utterly minimalist, cheap to buy, cheap to insure and easy to crash. Any that have survived this long tend to be wearing the years heavily on their not especially sturdy shoulders. On PistonHeads we recently wrote about a later S2 1.6 up for just shy of six grand, its end-of-the-production-line provenance and low mileage no doubt adding something of a premium to that eye catching price. 

As such I'd happily swap a six-figure mileage for saving a couple of grand, especially for what would appear to be an original, unmolested car. Those with experience of both rate the purity and intensity of the S1. Hand on heart if I could find one that's the version I'd prefer too. But even among owners' clubs pickings are seemingly thin, the only S1s sold recently looking like they needed a fair amount of work. 

The S2's 1.6-litre motor is, seemingly, relatively more torquey and flexible. But it's still a sub-tonne car with a smidge over 100hp so making progress is going to require commitment to using that Rallye breeding to the full. I absolutely adore the looks too, the steel wheels always standing out to me as something a bit special. To me this was a bit of a test by Peugeot - if you 'got' the concept of 14-inch steel wheels when the 'scene' was obsessed with big alloys then you understood the car's rationale. And white on white with Peugeot Sport stickers looks utterly fabulous. 

The proof would be in the viewing – and the driving – but the ad is more confidence inspiring than most you'll see for cars of this type and if that 205 is anything to go by it'd be a smart, not to mention entertaining, way to tie up a relatively meagre sum of money. Worst you could hope for would be getting the same back, including the upkeep to maintain it in this condition. I'd settle for that.