Peugeot is on a design renaissance. The French automaker introduced its latest model - the 2023 Peugeot 408 Fastback only last June and it has already received rave reviews from car aficionados just by its looks. 

It's no surprise then that the company celebrated its latest design achievement by making it an art installation. The Peugeot 408 Fastback was revealed last August 4th as an art piece at the Louvre-Lens, a modern art museum 200 kilometers north of Paris. The date of the reveal, 4-08, was not a coincidence either.

And it wasn't just parked along a driveway or on a podium. That would have been too common, and un-French. The 408 was mounted inside a transparent sphere that rotated and displayed the car from all angles for viewers to see.

Modern art

Normally, seeing the car at eye-level is enough to appreciate it. But Peugeot decided to reveal every nook and cranny of the 408's design with this art installation aptly called, The Sphere. And it took a talented team of artists, engineers and technicians from Parisian creative studio, Superbien, and the OPEn agency to make it happen. 

Viewing The Sphere must have been as creatively strange and different as seeing just the Peugeot 408 for the first time in the flesh. Even Peugeot CEO, Linda Jackson, was impressed by the outcome of the project. "We really liked the idea of this ephemeral work of art, which is original and beautiful to look at, and which perfectly accentuates our new arrival. The new PEUGEOT 408's original style has been praised by many people who have already discovered it. It has been presented in a very original way, in the magnificent and modern setting of the Louvre-Lens."

A different take

At 4.69-meters long, it squeezes between the 308 and 508 in Peugeot's car lineup. However, it takes the form of a low SUV, or a raised coupe, depending on your perspective. In Europe, this seems to be a growing trend among next-generation models as the market's preference for crossovers and SUVs, as well as electrification, has been dictating a shift in design philosophies among car markers.

With this latest model soon to hit the European market, Peugeot seems to have once again successfully mated technological innovation with avant-garde design. The French afterall, have a knack of doing things that suit them, carbuyer sentiments notwithstanding.

Would you like to see Peugeot Philippines bring in the all-new Peugeot 408?