Peugeot

Company History: Peugeot is a French automotive manufacturer, part of Groupe PSA.
The family business that preceded the current Peugeot company was founded in 1810 under Napoleon's Empire, and manufactured coffee mills and bicycles. Armand Peugeot built the company's first car, an unreliable steam tricycle, in collaboration with Léon Serpollet in 1889; this was followed in 1890 by an internal combustion car with a Panhard-Daimler engine. Armand Peugeot founded the Société des Automobiles Peugeot, in 1896.
In 1974, Peugeot bought a 30% share of Citroën, and took it over completely in 1975. The joint parent company became the PSA (Peugeot Société Anonyme) group, which aimed to keep separate identities for both the Peugeot and Citroën brands, while sharing engineering and technical resources. The group then took over the European division of Chrysler (which were formerly Rootes and Simca), in 1978 as the American auto manufacturer struggled to survive. Soon, the whole Chrysler/Simca range was sold under the revived Talbot badge until production of Talbot-branded passenger cars was shelved in 1987 and on commercial vehicles in 1992.

Peugeot has been involved successfully in motor sport for more than a century. Peugeot Sport won the World Rally Championship five times (1985, 1986, 2000, 2001, 2002), the Dakar Rally seven times (1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2016, 2017, 2018), the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times (1992, 1993, 2009), the World Endurance Championship twice (1992, 1993), the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup twice (2010, 2011) surpassing Toyota and Audi and the Intercontinental Rally Challenge Championship three times.

Brief History: France is one of Europe’s largest countries. It is bordered by six countries other nations: Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the southeast and Spain to the southwest. The United Kingdom borders France via the English Channel. The country is considered to be the gateway to Europe as there are several large international airports (two of these can be found in Paris), ferry terminals and the French rail service.

In 486, Frankish tribes unified under Merovingian kingship. In 843, Western Francia was established from the division of the Carolingian Empire. In 1789, the French monarchy was overthrown, and in 1792, the First French Republic was founded. In 1958, the Fifth French Republic was established.