Pierre Peugeot

Astute but publicity-shy chairman of the family firm who kept it French but took it global

Pierre Peugeot, industrialist: born Valentigney, France 11 June 1932; chairman, Peugeot 1988-2002; married (two sons, two daughters); died Paris 1 December 2002.

You can credit Peugeot with many motoring achievements – big estate cars, hot hatchbacks, thrifty diesels. Cars, though, are one thing: seasoning is quite another. And cooks and gourmands everywhere have Peugeot to thank for the invention, in 1842, of the peppermill.

Until then, peppercorns had to be hand-ground, but Peugeot's patented design cracked the peppercorns before grinding the pieces finely and evenly. The secret lay in the case-hardened steel used, and the mechanism was so reliable that it has remained in production, virtually unchanged, ever since. This enduring if conservative engineering, in the dawn of French industry, gave the Peugeot clan its great wealth. Pierre Peugeot was just the latest shepherd of it.

But, where his ancestors were obsessed by the metallic grind of factory life, Pierre Peugeot rose to become an astute and extraordinarily successful motor-industry tycoon, turning the previously parochial Peugeot into the world's No 6 car-maker. Moreover, he maintained the company as an entirely French-owned enterprise, and in the process instigated some of the most charismatic and popular family cars ever.

In the 15th century, two brothers, Jean-Pierre and Jean-Frédéric Peugeot, founded a steel mill in Montbeliard. Jean-Frédéric perfected a way to make cheap but high-quality saws, and the business was soon churning out ironmongery, machine tools, even metal stays and hoops for crinoline skirts, those peppermills, of course, and, eventually, bicycles: its expertise in making metal rods led to the production of bicycle-wheel spokes and, by 1885, complete bikes, and it rapidly became France's leading manufacturer.

In 1891, Armand Peugeot designed a motor car. Some members of the metal-bashing dynasty were sceptical of this 15mph contraption, and it took Armand 14 years to convince them it was a moneyspinner. Only then did they allow him to use their "lion" logo – the trademark the Peugeot family stamped on their kitchen gadgets to denote the quality of their steel. In 1915, the company split in two to create Automobiles Peugeot and Cycles Peugeot (the latter including the peppermills) and, to this day, the Peugeot family retains a major interest in both.

In the case of the car company, it is 28 per cent, making Peugeot, along with Ford, BMW and Morgan among the few family-controlled carmakers left. As chairman of Peugeot, Pierre – Armand Peugeot's great-great-nephew – marshalled his family's interests. He joined the company in 1957 after graduating in business administration in Paris, and doing his military service. The future French president Jacques Chirac was a friend from his army days, when Peugeot won the Cross of Valour. His first work posting was at the grubby end, at Peugeot's Sochaux factory, where he learned the business of car manufacture from the ground up.

Two years later, however, he was installed at Peugeot headquarters in Paris, responsible for developing assembly plants outside France. By 1964, he was joint director of overseas sales for Europe and North America.

To put this into context, Peugeot was essentially a one-car firm. Its 403 of 1955 was developed cautiously into the 1960 404, and the cars found favour at home but also in export markets – North Africa especially – where robustness was usually rated higher than speed. Very slowly, and with Pierre Peugeot's input, the company expanded into smaller cars like the 204 in 1965 and the 1972 104.

On the other hand, Peugeot had a canny eye on consumer taste: with the advent of the 403, every Peugeot was styled in Italy by the leading designer Pininfarina – more usually associated with Ferrari – to give Peugeots a chic and restrained elegance.

During the 1970s, Peugeot undertook two takeovers few rivals would have touched. In 1974, it acquired a heavily loss-making Citroën from the tyres giant Michelin and, four years later, it bought the entire European operations of America's Chrysler – for $1, plus debts. The Peugeot board, including Pierre, felt impelled by patriotic honour to shore up the French car industry – with its highly loyal and profitable home market – against foreign intrusion.

The moves also showed a ruthless streak to Peugeot. Factories were closed, workers laid off and car design cleverly harmonised so that Peugeots and Citroëns shared major components. The old Chrysler business was given a last chance, renamed Talbot, but, when that venture faltered, it was quickly canned.

On the other hand, Peugeot could spot pearl among swine. Chrysler UK's plant in Linwood, Glasgow was closed but its factory in Coventry saw Peugeot invest heavily and successfully, such that the Peugeot 206 it builds now is the top-selling British-built car.

After 30 years, Pierre Peugeot became chairman of the company's supervisory board in 1988. Since then he had been influential in choosing two executives who have fulfilled his dream of transforming the once dowdy Peugeot from a car industry also-ran to Europe's No 2, behind Volkswagen. Jacques Calvet, the former head of the Banque Nationale de Paris, turned the firm from a strike-bound mess into a lean operation, and his successor in 1997, Jean-Martin Folz, a former executive of the Pechiney aluminium group, has accelerated Peugeot ahead even more.

And the cars? Well, the 1983 205 became one of the seminal models of the decade, while the 1988 Peugeot 405 and 2002 Peugeot 307 were both voted European Car of the Year.

The difference between Pierre Peugeot and his peers is that he steadfastly resisted the car-industry merger mania of the 1990s, keeping the family's stake undiluted and his influence absolute. He admitted to defying the industry wisdom then current, but also found it "quite irritating" that his strategy should be constantly harangued by pundits and analysts.

He was an uncomfortable public figure. A book detailing Peugeot history, given away at the launch of the 206 in 1998, was tight-lipped about the family behind the products. Pierre Peugeot, a stern, grey-haired figure, gazes from the preface page beside a tribute that reveals absolutely nothing of one of the world's last car-making dynasties. This despite the fact two of Pierre's sons, Thierry and Xavier, are Peugeot executives (Xavier until recently Peugeot UK's advertising director), his daughter Marie-Hélène Roncoroni sits on the board, and another family member, Jean-Philippe Peugeot, is also a director.

The French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin described Pierre Peugeot as "a great industrialist who played an important role in transforming a French family company into a global group". The country's chefs, however, unknowingly thank him every day for keeping up culinary engineering traditions.

Giles Chapman