03-10-2016, 12:00 PM
It's all relative - 306's are still fairly common compared to most other cars of a similar age, in a large part because they resist rust better than most rivals.
They are disappearing steadily though, because time and mileage is catching up with them and they've been worth next to nothing for some time now which only exacerbates people being unwilling to spend money on upkeep. We live in an era of cheap money and increasingly few people able/willing to get their hands dirty maintaining anything, meaning that increasingly people are looking at cheap lease/loan deals to drive around in a new car rather than pay the labour costs involved with keeping an older used car on the road.
I've spent the last couple of weeks in Europe, mostly in the South of France - rest assured, there's still thousands of 306's over there along with various other 70/80/90's French chod. Perhaps most surprising was the sheer number of Renault 4's still apparently in regular use, damned impressive for a car dating back to the 60's!
They are disappearing steadily though, because time and mileage is catching up with them and they've been worth next to nothing for some time now which only exacerbates people being unwilling to spend money on upkeep. We live in an era of cheap money and increasingly few people able/willing to get their hands dirty maintaining anything, meaning that increasingly people are looking at cheap lease/loan deals to drive around in a new car rather than pay the labour costs involved with keeping an older used car on the road.
I've spent the last couple of weeks in Europe, mostly in the South of France - rest assured, there's still thousands of 306's over there along with various other 70/80/90's French chod. Perhaps most surprising was the sheer number of Renault 4's still apparently in regular use, damned impressive for a car dating back to the 60's!
1990 Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9 // 1991 Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9 16v // 1992 Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9 // 1999 Peugeot 306 HDi Estate