What's the news?
It might be a long way distant from the road-going version, but all Peugeot 2008 owners should feel an extra little burst of pride from now on - as the French company has won the gruelling Dakar Rally in the brutal 2008 DKR.
Coming 26 years after Peugeot last won the Paris-Dakar (due to security concerns, it has been run in South America since 2009), Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret took first place after 45 hours, 22 minutes and ten seconds of immense rally-raid driving, spread across 15 days, 9,500km and two countries.
Starting in Buenos Aires and looping up into Bolivia before returning to Argentina, car number 302 and its crew emerged triumphant - making it the sixth four-wheeled victory for Peterhansel and Cottret together, and adding to Peterhansel's six further event wins on a motorcycle; no wonder they call him 'Mr Dakar'.
It wasn't just the No.302 2008 DKR which did sterling work, however, as Peugeot won nine of the 12 mammoth stages, including seven one-two finishes and three one-two-three clean sweeps. In the other three cars were Cyril Despres and David Castera (returning for their second Dakar in a car), Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena (the former WRC legend making his Dakar debut), and Spanish star Carlos Sainz with co-driver Lucas Cruz. Despres/Castera came home seventh, Loeb/Elena finished ninth and only Sainz/Cruz failed to make the finish, although they were leading with four days of the event to go.
Rallying megastar Loeb, in particular, looked deeply impressive in taking three stage wins out of the first five, before a roll on stage ten put paid to his victory hopes, while Sainz's retirement was due to a mechanical failure. Still, four-wheeled victory and three top-ten finishes is not bad for a company taking part in only its second South American Dakar, eh?
Anything else?
Bruno Famin, Peugeot Sport's director, said rather ominously (for Peugeot's rivals): "The results have surpassed our expectations because we came here just to show the performance of the car. And we've achieved that objective well throughout all different types of conditions. We're absolutely delighted with this result and we hope to confirm it again next year - maybe even by aiming for a one-two-three." Frenchman Peterhansel added: "This is a huge satisfaction for us. Before the start, a result like this was far from guaranteed. My feeling was that the team was still a bit young, but in fact everything came together extremely well. We had the nice surprise of seeing that our car was extremely competitive throughout the WRC-style stages. I just tried to stay in touch during those days, knowing that Carlos and Seb were quicker than me.
"We drove a clean rally with one day of maximum attack, and then we found ourselves in the lead with a very comfortable margin: 50 minutes with just three days to go. After that, it was just a question of looking after that gap as intelligently as possible. When I was competing on my very first Dakars as a bike rider, I dreamed of one day driving for Peugeot. To have joined the team and won with them is a massive source of satisfaction for me."