The historic Peugeot Motocycles brand is about to go full circle and will be cheerfully returning to La Belle France later this year. And, ironically, few of its more recent owners were even aware that the company first rose to fame on the Isle of Man more than one hundred years ago. Inaugural TT motorcycle races held on the Island in 1907 saw legendary racer Harry Rembrandt Fowler win the twin-cylinder class astride a Norton-badged machine powered by an altogether superior French Peugeot engine.
But there’s been a lot of water under the proverbial bridge since then. Peugeot built its first motorcycle in 1898, with a Dion-Bouton engine, having already become the oldest car brand in the world in 1896 and making bicycles since 1880. The company then concentrated on cars and motorcycles from 1926 onwards. To cut a long story short, a forced takeover merged Citroën in 1975, and the group continued as PSA Peugeot Citroën and then PSA Peugeot Groupe, a French multinational automotive manufacturer producing cars under a variety of brands, as well as scooters, mopeds and motorcycles.
This eventually morphed into Stellantis and coincided with PSA’s decision to dispose of its involvement in powered two-wheelers in 2015. The huge Indian automotive conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra bought a 51% shareholding in Peugeot’s then-primarily scooter business for €28m. PSA retained 49% for a while before the Indian stake was subsequently extended to 100%. Mahindra & Mahindra brought the Peugeot brand back to top-level motorcycle racing through a Moto3 project featuring Mahindra-based Peugeot MGP30s for John McPhee and Alexis Masbou in 2016. McPhee won his (and Peugeot’s) first Grand Prix in wet conditions at the Czech Republic’s Brno circuit that year.
However, after eight years of ownership, Mahindra & Mahindra lost interest, and Munich-based German international private equity investment group Mutares SE initially acquired 50% of Peugeot Motocycles in November 2022, then increased to an 80% stake, before completing the effective full acquisition in February 2023. Mutares then stabilised Peugeot Motocycles’ renewed European presence with production focused at its French Mandeure site. ClementsMoto became and remains the brand’s UK distributor.
The Mutares tenure has been relatively brief and, one assumes, highly profitable. Aiming for typical private equity growth, it promptly bought French electric bike brand DAB Motors, which was added to the Peugeot portfolio, with DAB models manufactured at the Peugeot Mandeure plant from 2024. And then in October 2025, Mutares entered into a deal with established French off-road motorcycle manufacturer Sherco to supply Peugeot-branded products. The first of these were launched at EICMA last year, a Peugeot XP6 model in enduro and supermotard configurations. Sherco currently assembles its own enduro and supermotard bikes at Nîmes in the south of France, as well as trials bikes at Caldes de Montbui in Spain, 30 kilometres north of Barcelona.
Finally, Mutares announced that it had accepted an offer for the Peugeot business in March 2026. This will take the form of a buy-out by the current Peugeot Motocycles management team, which should complete in the second quarter of this year.
Explaining his exit cue, Mutares chief investment officer Johannes Laumann, said: “We are confident to now place Peugeot Motocycles in the best possible hands for its next phase. The team has developed a clear and compelling plan for the future of the business and has demonstrated strong execution capabilities during our ownership. We believe the management team is ideally positioned to further develop the brand and successfully implement its growth strategy.”
Quite how the Peugeot Motocycles relationship with Sherco will progress is presently opaque, but the French are notorious for sticking together and any potential merger with such a storied brand would be logical.