Recessed ‘safety’ door handles also highlighted the car's innovative aspirations, as did the advertised automatic transmission and diesel engine options.

Sticking to a traditional separate chassis configuration also made it much easier for Peugeot's 402 to be offered with a wide range of different bodies.

The amount invested in developing the car and in tooling up to produce it, as well as the aggressive way in which it was priced, suggest that Peugeot always intended the 402 to be a big seller by the standards of the time.

Nevertheless, it was also a big car at the high end of the volume car market, and in advertising material of the time Peugeot evidently thought it important to highlight one or two tempting standard features, such as the twin windscreen wipers powered by their own electric motor, the semaphore-style trafficators, the clock included on the instrument panel, the twin sun visors and the switchable reserve section of the fuel tank.

An aspect of the all-steel car bodies that became mainstream among the larger European automakers in the 1930s was the very high initial cost associated with the heavy steel presses and the dies needed to cut and stamp pressed steel sheeting into the panels that, when welded together, would form a sufficiently rigid and robust car body.

[6] The simple formula of combining one existing bodyshell with another engine that was also already in production enabled the manufacturer to produce an attractively brisk car with minimum investment.

[5] Not yet ready for presentation at the 1937 show, but nevertheless already priced (at 30,900 Francs) and advertised was the 402 Légère “coach”, which was a stylish thinner looking 2-door four seater car shaped somewhere between a sedan/saloon and coupe, with “glass on glass” side windows (allowing for the possibility, with the windows open, of a “pillarless” side profile) and front seats that tilted to permit access to the adequately spacious rear of the passenger cabin.

[5] Represented at the motor show by a prototype which differed in certain details from the cars that actually appeared a few months later was the 402 Légère “décapotable” (soft-top convertible), priced at 31,900 Francs.

[5] Both the “coach” and the “décapotable” bodied cars featured a slightly more streamlined look than the “berline”, and their stylishness was enhanced by “spats” covering the upper portions of the rear wheels.

Interest in the Éclipse resurfaced more than half a century later with the reinvention of the retractable hardtop by the 1995 Mitsubishi 3000GT Spyder and subsequent popularization of the concept by cars such as the 1996 Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class.

Several of the body types were priced (and presumably costed) to be produced in relatively low volumes, and despite appearing at the Motor Show in October 1936, three had been delisted by the start of 1937.

[7] In addition, the manufacturer advertised a special taxi version of the long wheel base car, closely resembling the Familiale and of which, it was boasted in 1937, several thousand were already in service “in Paris and the [other] principal towns and cities in France or the colonies”.

Much attention at the 1936 show also focused on the “402 cabriolet metallique decouvrable” which was a reincarnation of the Éclipse, but now using the 3,300 mm (130 in) “long” wheel base which made enough space for a (rather cramped) second bench seat.

[7] Light commercial van and utility variants of the 402 were also produced (or derived from conversion), and during the car's final years, during World War II, assumed increasing prominence within the range.

[1][10] During the early months of 1939 several dozen long bodied 402 "conduite interieure" saloons were fitted with diesel engines and sold into the taxi trade.

[11] The development work was not wasted, however, and in 1959 Peugeot would launch the 403, one of the world's earlier diesel powered saloons, albeit beaten to the market by Mercedes-Benz.

[1] The option of a Cotal three-speed automatic was offered,[1] but this was an elaborate system more commonly seen on upmarket models from the likes of Delahaye and Delage.

[2] Peugeot only became a regular supplier to the army in 1938, but during 1939 and 1940 several thousand 202s and 402s were operating with the armed services, the long wheel base 402 being a particular military favourite.

[2] The speed of the French defeat in June 1940 may have come as a shock, but the advent of another war with Germany and of resulting restrictions on civilian fuel availability had been widely foreseen.

The DK 5 was based on a dedicated truck chassis but had the body of the 401 and the front part of the 402 with its back cut off to accommodate a large cargo area.

The car was used by HP Baxxter in his music video 'Friends' In 1910, Armand having no sons of his own, it was agreed that the two branches of the Peugeot business be reunited.