I currently own 3 Peugeots with this marvellous engine. No.1 is my 1994 405 GLDT saloon:

I bought this car in May of 2006, for a friend of mine to use while I sold his MX-5 before he emigrated to Australia that September. It cost £150 with 8 months' MOT and 3 months' tax, probably due to a poor eBay writeup/pictures (it lived on a farm and needed 3hrs+ of cleaning to get it "white" again!).
Inevitably my friend decided to keep his MX-5 for the summer, so I did around 3,000 miles over a couple of months. It had no history to back up it's 175k miles so I got the cambelt and waterpump changed and did a full service myself. Wonderful - I got 48mpg, and what a dream around corners! Sadly, I decided it couldn't stay, so sold it that August - foolishly I then decided to get a company car and sold my everyday Accord almost instantly, which was daft, as the new car had a 12-week delivery time; I could have used the Peugeot around!
In July last year I decided to change job, and gave up my lovely Saab 9-3 TiD. As luck would have it, the new owner of my 405 e-mailed me to say he needed rid; it had sat for 5 months since the MOT ran out, did I want it for scrap value (£50)? I said yes, on the proviso he booked it in for an MOT when I collected it (hoping to take advantage of the Road Traffic Act loophole to bring it home). You could have knocked me down with a feather when it passed, needing just a bulb replaced!
It has been my everyday car ever since; the mileometer now reads just shy of 190k so I have added 10k since I started my current job in November. Funnily enough I discovered that the rear brakes and handbrake didn't work very well, as I found I could move the car just by tightening the rear wheelnuts (bad/good day for the MOT tester?)...so it was booked in for new rear shoes, cylinders, flexihoses, and glowplugs. Oh, and the fitting of four new shock absorbers and a towbar I got cheaply on eBay.
Let's just say this work wasn't cheap - the labour was 13.5 hours - but all told the car stands me at about £1,000. It gets oil, air and fuel filters every 5k. The remote locking doesn't work, and I need to change the leakoff pipes, but it's a wonderful drive.
In November of last year I got wind of an estate, same model, same year, being sold cheap locally (£250) with a full year's MOT and 6 months' tax. So naturally I bought it:

Naturally it wasn't perfect - it had done 247k, both rear doors were a different colour (I have no idea why), the heater didn't heat, and the offside front wing was badly dented. I flushed the cooling system, changed the thermostat and refilled and bled it several times, but could never get a huge amount of heat out.
It also lost a litre of coolant every 200 miles and the temperature gauge would drop to zero for no reason every so often - perhaps the dreaded HG? Anyway, I decided that it would be nonsensical to pour money into it, so I sold it for what I paid a couple of months ago to a pair of Germans who plan to drive it to Morocco this summer!
I replaced it with what I should have bought in the first place:

A 405 Hunter. Lots more kit - ABS, roof rails, a/c, electric windows all round, a towbar, two owners from new with a bulging history file, 8 months' MOT and 3 months' tax, and the HG and cylinder head had recently been replaced. And all mine for £375. Perfect. Unfortunately the waterpump went on strike soon after I got it, but the garage replaced this and the cambelt, as I had a spare one.
But - disaster struck at the end of last month! I returned from a 300-mile round trip and parked the car on the drive. Two hours later, my neighbour knocked on the door and informed me he'd just seen the car roll off the drive, down the slope opposite my house and into a brick wall! Yes, the handbrake had been applied...
I retrieved the car and dejectedly stripped off the bent panels - both front wings, bumper and bonnet were all bent, the grille and lights smashed. Luckily, the inner wings, slam panel and radiator were OK.
It currently looks better than this - I've sprayed the new bumper and wings, fitted new lights and a grille, and the bonnet will be sprayed this weekend - but you get the idea:

I would have preferred not to break the paint gun out, but Sorrento Green 405 panels are like hen's teeth, it seems! I'm just glad the car will live again, it seemed pointless to scrap it (TPFT insurance due to the car's value) - I played the Green card with my wife, anyway.
Hopefully back on the road next week; it will need a new windscreen for the next MOT and a small hole welding up near the nearside front strut, where the "chassis" rail kicks up. Oh, and I will be getting the rear brakes looked at ASAP, too...

The aircon is unserviceable - it leaks from somewhere - but I don't care. These things are massive inside, so very useful as a fetch-and-carry device.
Finally, there's the 406L DT that I bought on Saturday:
Not much to tell yet, other than: 230k miles, MOT to the end of July, 3 owners but no history, and it smokes (blue) quite a bit and idles lumpily. And it feels a lot slower than either 405 - the saloon being faster than the estate in that regard.
Time will tell whether this will be a permanent member of the fleet, but first priority is to give it a good service and deduce whether the smoke is down to the engine thinking it is cold all the time (temp gauge doesn't rise above 70 currently), old oil, old diesel, air in the fuel, duff timing, valve stem seals, clogged injectors, or turbo problems.
Richard
PS I'm still tempted to try a Xantia or ZX TD one day...
