A number of marques were inherited following the acquisition of Chrysler Europe in 1978, and some were merged to re-establish Talbot, a previously dormant marque.
The Rootes Group, by then owned by Chrysler Europe, purchased the 187 acre site from Hawker Siddeley Dynamics in 1969 for the purpose of centralising all its design and engineering teams onto one site.
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The 309 was also significant in that it was the first Peugeot car to be assembled in the former Rootes factory in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, which Peugeot had inherited from Chrysler Europe in 1978.
It replaced the long-running Paykan which was itself based on the Hillman Hunter, an ancestor (in corporate ownership and model positioning terms) of the 405, having been produced by the Rootes Group and Chrysler UK from 1963 until 1979 - the year that Peugeot purchased Chrysler's European operations.
The engine was first designed in a 944 cc form, but was reduced and stretched in order to be used in a variety of models and versions, by Simca, the Rootes Group (its partner company in Chrysler Europe), Simca's final incarnation Talbot and its last parent company Peugeot, who used it until 1991 in its midsize model, the 309.
The car was originally manufactured in Poissy in France, in Ryton in the United Kingdom, from 1977 in Villaverde in Barreiros, subsidiary of Chrysler Europe in Spain, and assembled from CKD kits by Todd Motors (later Mitsubishi Motors NZ) in New Zealand between 1977 and about 1983.
The names were sourced from the corporate ancestor of Chrysler Europe, the Rootes Group, having been used on the Sunbeam Rapier and Hillman Minx.
As with previous Talbot and Chrysler Europe models, styling of the T15 was the responsibility of the British design centre in Whitley, Coventry.