Development was led by Matra's head of engineering and design Philippe Guédon and Chrysler-Simca product planner Jacques Rousseau.

Eleven prototypes were built and used for road-testing in environments ranging from Saharan Mauritania to Lapland, as well as for crash-testing.

The car was built in Matra's factory in the commune of Romorantin-Lanthenay in the department of Loir-et-Cher in central France.

Rather than being sold under its development code name, the car took its name from the character in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

[8][9] The initial shape of the car was drawn by Jean Toprieux and later refined by Jacques Nochet.

Greek designer Antonis Volanis joined the project and contributed to the interior, handling the instrument panel and steering wheel shapes.

The driver had a regular seat while on the passenger side was a single two-place bench with two individual seatbacks inspired by a lounge chair Guédon had found in a Paris shop.

[6] The advantages of using LP for Matra were its ability to produce large, high quality panels with precision and economy.

[11] The LP process had only been in use for twelve month prior to the beginning of production, which means that Matra had introduced this new technology at the car's early development stage.

[3] It consisted of upper and lower A-arms with telescopic hydraulic dampers and longitudinal torsion bars running back along the chassis for springing.

This proved unsatisfactory and so the final production cars received a new system that comprised new trailing arms designed by Matra with transverse torsion bars and telescopic shock-absorbers.

Early in 1974 the German Magazine Auto, Motor und Sport tested a 1294 cc Bagheera and compared it to its closest competitors in the market.

[2] The Bagheera won the ADAC Silberne Zitrone ("Silver Lemon") award in 1975 for the poorest quality car at the time.

Complaints ranged from a leaky body that allowed rain to enter the cabin to mechanical failures.

While the polyester body panels do not rust, the problem was caused by the underlying steel chassis having almost no corrosion protection.

[19] In March 1973 a team of Matra engineers led by Georges Pinardaud completed the initial design for project M560, which was to be a more powerful Bagheera.

A sprocket and Morse chain from each crankshaft were connected to a 22.9 mm (0.9 in) shaft running down the middle of the sump that transmitted power from the left-hand crank to the right.

Overall width increased by 20 mm (0.8 in) due to the addition of larger wheel arches added to clear wider tires, which were 185/70 VR14s at the front and 205/70 VR14s at the rear.