PSA Poissy Plant

The PSA Poissy plant is a French car plant belonging to PSA Peugeot Citroën located in Poissy, Yvelines. It is dedicated to the manufacturer’s Platform 1 cars, which are cars in the subcompact class, with an annual output of approximately 200,000 cars.

In 2010 the plant produced the Peugeot 207, the Peugeot 207 SW and the Citroën DS3. Together with the and at , it is one of three major establishments that PSA runs in the department.

The Poissy plant was commissioned by Ford France in 1937 and opened in 1940 a few weeks before the German invasion. When, in 1954, Ford sold their business to Simca, the Poissy plant was naturally included in the deal, and less than ten years later Simca closed their existing plant at Nanterre, leaving Poissy as their only significant auto-production facility. Ownership passed again in 1963, this time to Chrysler who in that year acquired a controlling interest in Simca. Then in 1978 Peugeot acquired Chrysler’s European business. Former Simca models were rebadged as Talbots and continued to be produced at the Poissy plant during the early 1980s. However, the mid-range hatchback that had been designed to sustain the Talbot brand was rebadged ahead of launch as the Peugeot 309. That is the name under which it was sold, and since that time the plant has concentrated on the production of small Peugeots.

In October 2010 the plant had 6,535 registered employees.

The construction of the Poissy plant was the project of Maurice Dollfus, Ford’s dynamic boss in France. In 1932 governments had responded to economic contraction by raising tariff barriers and Ford had responded to the need to source vehicles locally by entering into an agreement, in 1934, with the Strasbourg-based Mathis company to produce Ford-designed cars, which would be branded as Matfords, in an extended Strasbourg plant. Ford brought cash to the deal and a fractious partnership ensued, Mathis having found themselves obliged to abandon production of their own cars in October 1934. For Dollfus the Poissy plant, commissioned in 1938, would provide a route away from the by now bitterly litigious Matford relationship. Construction began on a large 240,000 m2 site bordering the River Seine in Poissy at the start of November 1938 and progressed remarkably rapidly, with the plant formally completed on 1 May 1940. Located a short distance downstream from Paris along the (here fully navigable) River Seine, Poissy was near to Asnières, which was home to Chausson, at that time a car body producer and principal supplier to Ford France. The site was also adjacent to the main railway line connecting Paris with Le Havre.

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