For decades, the Peugeot 504 was Nigeria’s car. It ferried civil servants to work, served as the backbone of taxi fleets and became a fixture of family road trips across the country.
At its peak, Peugeot was so dominant that the Kaduna factory assembling the vehicles stood as one of the clearest symbols of Nigeria’s industrial ambitions. Then it all fell apart.
The company behind the iconic brand, Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN), struggled under years of declining sales, policy inconsistency, competition from imported used vehicles and mounting financial troubles.
By 2012, the company had accumulated debts estimated at about N30 billion and was taken over by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), the government agency established to acquire distressed assets from Nigerian banks.
What followed was a slow decline of a brand that once dominated Nigerian roads.
