Neil Dowling
Contributing Journalist
17 Oct 2008
2 min read

The 308-based Prologue seen at the Paris motor show will be the first into production, hitting the European market in 2010. The five-door hatch will be in Australia as a conventionally-powered diesel by mid-2009 and as an all-wheel-drive hybrid — as shown in Paris — by late 2010 or early 2011.

“The Prologue will be the first of our low-emission, diesel hybrids,” says Peugeot communications director, Christian Peugeot. “Then we will widen the range.”

Peugeot showed its Prologue at Paris in its all-wheel-drive layout — a design that allows a relatively simple hybrid solution by retaining a conventional front-engined, front-wheel drive and adding electric motors to drive the rear wheels.

The HYmotion4 — Peugeot-speak for the AWD hybrid drive — shows how the Prologue will be offered as a traditional front-wheel drive diesel or the AWD hybrid.

Peugeot displayed the Prologue hybrid along with a low-emission 407 sedan that claims just 130g/km CO2 from its 1.6-litre turbo-diesel engine. This 407 goes on sale in Europe in December.

Vehicles that aren't hybrids will, by 2011, get stop and start systems that automatically switch off the engine when the vehicle is stationary and restart when needed.

Depending on driving conditions, this system saves 5 to 15per cent in fuel use and an equivalent reduction in emissions.

Neil Dowling
Contributing Journalist
GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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