The Peugeot 104 we’re visiting today is ending its days in a ditch on the outskirts of a small town in southern France. I’ve driven past it time and again, but I never noticed it until a friend mentioned something was down there. In my defense, it’s fairly difficult to spot from a moving car.

The 104 is slowly becoming one with nature. How it got in the ditch is anyone’s guess. It’s nearly complete, and it doesn’t look like it was wrecked. The odds of it being stolen are pretty slim because it’s an area that has always been quiet and relatively crime-free, but anything is possible. Another plausible scenario is that its owner dumped it down there because it was faster and cheaper than calling a junkyard or listing it in the local classifieds. It’s the only car in the ditch, but there are miscellaneous body panels (including quite a few Panhard bits and pieces), appliances, lumber, construction material, and so forth.

It’s been the ditch for decades, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so I’ll visit the 104 again in the winter time in hopes of getting a better look at it. In the meantime, here’s a gallery of pictures I shot a couple of weeks ago.