Exclusive: Peugeot CEO's plan to reinvent world's oldest car maker

The man who has the exciting task of restoring this languorous lion to true greatness is Alain Favey, appointed to the top job in February last year.

As C-suite roles go, it's a daunting one—not just because this is one of Europe's biggest-selling brands but also one of the world's oldest surviving car makers.

Is it intimidating to take on such a weighty responsibility? "Absolutely not," replies Favey. "But you do feel a certain level of responsibility for the people who are lovers of the brand, and there are so many across the world."

Favey joined Peugeot after an 18-month stint as CEO of 'mobility' giant Europcar, having previously spent two years running sales and marketing at Bentley, following a four-year spell doing the same for Skoda.

Earlier, he was CEO of car distribution giant Porsche Holding, and he had spent some time at Volkswagen too, after a whopping 20-year tenure at Citroën.

It's a varied career path that should stand Favey in good stead as he embarks on the daunting task of carving out a stronger foothold for Peugeot in today's ceaselessly turbulent market environment.

"My own experience comes now to full fruition in my role at Peugeot, because of all the different experiences that I could gather in all of those great brands," he says. "Each of them had specific assets that I'm trying to recreate in the Peugeot of the future."

That's not to say that we can expect Peugeot to start slipping Skoda-style 'Simply Clever' features into its cars, or give Favey's old colleagues at Crewe a headache with a kilometre-munching luxury coupé.

But Favey's learnings from his previous employers—highly disparate and individualistic as they were—can absolutely inform how he tackles his latest assignment.

"Every brand has been completely different," he says. "Skoda was a great discovery of a brand with a big soul, a long history and a lot of skills, and Bentley was for me the discovery of the luxury segment, which has completely different ways of approaching the car."

How all of that manifests at Peugeot has yet to take shape, but the recently revealed Polygon concept serves as a tangible statement of intent for Favey as he sculpts the brand's future.

While some forward-looking concept cars serve exclusively as manifestos, being ethereal, outlandish and often unrealistic allusions to a manufacturer's ideals and ambitions, the Polygon is rather more concrete.

Not only has Peugeot suggested the third-generation 208 will look a lot like it, but some of its most noteworthy, headline-grabbing features will trickle into showrooms in the coming years too.

That includes its unusual 'Hypersquare' steering wheel, which isn't really a wheel at all.

It is a strange yoke-style device that controls the front wheels electronically, rather than via a conventional mechanical connection, with the steering ratio varying according to speed to boost agility at all speeds.

The idea is that all manoeuvres need no more than a quarter turn.

It's a dramatic break from convention of the sort for which Peugeot used to be renowned before becoming part of a massive multi-brand conglomerate and sidelining innovation for the benefit of cost-effective tech-sharing—and one that is not without its vocal detractors.

But Favey is confident of the Hypersquare's ability to assist in turning Peugeot's modern-era reputation around.

"We believe that it's really an innovation that will bring about curiosity," he says. "And we believe that the technology will be so striking in terms of the pleasure it brings in driving the car that people will just want it absolutely."

In fact, he thinks it's Peugeot's "role as a leading mainstream brand in Europe" to bring this sort of innovation to market. "Because if we don't, who will?" Indeed, once it has made its way to Peugeot dealerships, steer-by-wire will then be rolled out to other Stellantis line-ups, helping to cement the brand's reputation as a technological flag-bearer.

It's this same rationale—this same pioneering spirit and sense of whimsy—that underpins the Favey-backed revival of Peugeot's storied GTi performance line, beginning with a 278bhp, slippy-diffed version of the e-208 later this year.

It may be technically identical to similarly conceived hot hatchbacks from Abarth, Alfa and Vauxhall, but this spicy new Alpine A290 rival is emblematic of the CEO's desire to recapture the enthusiast vote and put dynamism firmly back on the brand's mood board.

"You can rely on things like GTi, which is clearly part of our DNA," says Favey, "and you can use it to position the brand—for example, to say very clearly that Peugeot stands for great driving sensations. That's part of what we are."

But none of his pretensions to technological leadership and enthusiast appeasement will come at the expense of Peugeot's hard-won commercial success.

Currently the marque accounts for 40% of Stellantis's entire European sales footprint, with a whopping 5.6% market share making it one of the region's most popular car brands overall—and putting it on track to achieve its target of a Renault-baiting 7% by 2030.

It's resolutely a mainstream marque and plans to be even more so, but without losing any of the premium lustre that sets it apart from its more everyman-oriented sibling brands, among them Citroën, Fiat and Opel-Vauxhall.

Asked how he plans to marry those two seemingly opposing notions, Favey replies: "For us, both go together. Yes, we want to be upper mainstream, but we are a mainstream brand, which means we want to sell cars to everybody."

Tough gig. How do you simultaneously boost the aspirational element of a brand while both enhancing its attainability and using it as a platform to introduce potentially divisive new technology and features?

Can Favey really make Peugeot's cars more alluring and more ubiquitous at once, in the context of a market environment that is more tempestuous and crowded than ever before?

It's a tricky task that will require him to make the fundamentals of the brand's positioning more solid than perhaps they have been since it started making coffee grinders and handsaws more than 200 years ago.

Undaunted, he says: "That's what I'm here for as a CEO: to really make sure that this brand is stronger in 10 years or in 20 years than it is today. It starts with the positioning of the brand, to make sure that the brand stands out from the competition, and the competition is every day a bit wider, a bit more tough than it was before, so having a heritage like we do is a big help."

Basically, he suggests, Peugeot needs to be more Peugeoty than it has ever been before—making cars that are more distinctive, more interesting, more bespoke—to keep ahead of rivals and cultivate a real sense of personality.

"Peugeot stands for great driving sensations," stresses Favey, highlighting an asset that he plans to emphasise and leverage as he forges a path forward—but that's just one of several.

"Peugeot stands also for quality for what we call 'designed to last'—so we really want a Peugeot to be something that has quality of product and quality of service," he says. "And Peugeot stands for a design that stands out, and that's what we call the 'French charisma.'"

Favey says Peugeot aims to promote its heritage as a French brand through ever more distinctive exterior and interior designs, which will align with the more obviously bespoke driving characteristics of its cars.

"We believe that nobody else has this combination of specific driving sensations, quality level behind the wheel and specific styling," he continues. "Nobody has that other than Peugeot. So that helps us to position the brand and to stand out from the competition."

The days of playing it safe and keeping the apple cart upright, then, would appear to be behind Peugeot—but how does that tally with Favey's ambition to enhance its popular appeal and grow its footprint?

"What I know is that our target is to reach 7% market share, so even if 93% of the market wants something different, I'm fine with it," he answers.

"The Peugeot target group is customers who want more than just basic mobility. They will want a car that has a certain attractive design, that is different from the rest. And they will want the promise of a quality brand that has specific driving sensations, that maybe not everybody loves—but that's fine again. As long as we find 7% who love it, that's okay."

Where the UK fits in

Peugeot sells more than 100,000 new cars per year in the UK, making it one of the brand's biggest markets globally—and as one of Europe's biggest EV markets, the UK also plays a key role in helping the marque shape its global electrification strategy, explains Favey.

"It's definitely one of the biggest markets for us," he says. "Also, the UK is a kind of test bed for a lot of things that we're trying to do, especially in the BEV market.

"To be compliant with the ZEV mandate is clearly one of our targets, and we're very happy to see that [in 2025] we found the recipe to achieve that. It's the best proof for us that our multi-energy strategy—offering BEVs on every model we have in the range—is a fruitful one."

Peugeot remains committed to racing

Peugeot has a long and storied history at the Le Mans 24 Hours, pulling off stunning wins in the 1992, 1993 and 2009 editions of its local race, but it hasn't enjoyed quite the same success since returning to the World Endurance Championship in 2022.