The Peugeot Pars is a 4-door saloon from Peugeot, built from 2000 to 2024, in the decade of stability control, dual-clutch gearboxes and the first serious hybrids. Under the bonnet: PSA XU engine#XU7.
The background
The Peugeot Pars (Persian: پژو پارس), previously known as Peugeot Persia and Peugeot Safir, is a passenger car produced by the Iranian carmaker Iran Khodro. After 10 years of manufacturing the Peugeot 405 in Iran, the Peugeot company designed the Peugeot Persia For Iran as its facelift, with a front end design similar to that of the Peugeot 406. The Peugeot Persia was soon renamed Peugeot Safir and eventually Peugeot Pars because of local copyright problems.
The engineering
Power comes from PSA XU engine#XU7; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Peugeot 405; its successor was the IKCO Soren Plus; assembly was at Tehran. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Hyundai Santa Fe, the Honda S2000, the Honda Fit — show what else the money bought that year. Its Peugeot stablemates include the Peugeot Onyx and the DS 5.