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The aircraft was developed in 1941 at Messerschmitt in Augsburg on behalf of the Reich Ministry of Aviation and at the suggestion of the head of the Flight Testing Department, Gerhard Caroli.  It was built in France by the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Nord (SNCAN), which had been producing the Messerschmitt Bf 108 since the occupation of France by Germany. The airframe is very similar to the one used on the Bf 108, one can speak of a modernized and heavily modified Bf 108 overall.

On 15 September 1941, Messerschmitt's specifications on which the contract development at SNCAN was based and which are still preserved today originally favoured a twin-engine version of the new Taifun, but this was refrained from due to the requirement to keep operating costs as low as possible; the slats still present in the old Typhoon were also omitted. The experience of important French and German aeronautical engineers (and enthusiasts) was combined in the development of the Me 208, which is clearly noticeable in the results of the flight behaviour and the flight data (payload, speed, range and distance consumption, altitude) and equipment (retractable landing gear, propeller blade adjustment) that have hardly been achieved by any other manufacturer to date.

In 1942/43, SNCAN completed at least two prototypes of the Messerschmitt Me 208, which bore the original registration numbers "GK+RZ" and "KR+BZ". The occasionally mentioned third pre-series example is probably an experimental machine still produced in Augsburg and initially still equipped with tailwheel chassis, which was still mainly based on original Me 108 components. According to the specifications, acceptance had taken place automatically with the approval of the machine by the French authorities, although (as was the case with the contract production of the Bf 108 by SNCAN) an essential point – the limited interchangeability of the flaps (doors and engine cover) due to higher production tolerances at SNCAN – was to be criticized.

The example with the registration "KR+BZ" with Argus As 10, which still existed at SNCAN at the time of the liberation of France, was subsequently given the designation Nord 1100 Noralpha. The second machine – equipped with a Renault 6Q 10 – was designated Nord 1101. As with the Bf 108, Renault engines were also installed from 1942 onwards due to the increasingly poor availability of the Argus engines. The version with the Renault 6Q-11 engine was given the designation Nord 1102. The two engines differed from each other in their direction of rotation. In the French armed forces, the aircraft types were designated Ramier I and Ramier II after the war.

Since 60% of the production of the Messerschmitt 208 consisted of German-made parts in accordance with the contract, series production of the machines ended shortly after they were launched in 1943. In order to cover the development and production costs, at least in retrospect, and to be able to develop its own and new, modern machine in post-war France (the Nord 1203 "Norecrin"), Nord sold the total of about 200 completed machines of the two 208 variants with Renault 6Q engines, which could be completed or completed with parts still in stock, mainly to the French Air Force and the Armée l'Aeronavale. They were in service there until 1963. Probably for legal reasons, at least the entire technical documentation was recoded into French as part of the translation, so the part numbers in the catalogues begin with "1101-" or "1102-" instead of "208-", although the original numbers (starting with "208-") are still present on all physically existing machines, for example and without much ado on the chassis parts.

After the war, Messerschmitt founded the "Entwicklungsring Nord" with designer friends and later founded a "Nord Flugzeugwerke GmbH" in Hamburg-Finkenwerder, but the relocation or resumption of production of the Me 208 could not be implemented. On the one hand, Messerschmitt had been banned from practicing his profession at the Nuremberg Trial at least until 1953, and on the other hand, the rights to the contract development of the Me 208 carried out at SNCAN could not be clarified. Thus, the continuation of the Taifun series, planned in 1974 by the two professors Willy Messerschmitt and Kurt Tank (but also not completed), was not continued under the designation "208", but planned under the designation "108 E".

The Me 208 represents the last and thus highest completed development stage of the propeller-driven Typhoon series. A twin-engine, six-seater business and touring aircraft under the designation Messerschmitt Me 308 "Jet-Typhoon" was shown as a model at the Paris Aero Motor Show in 1962, but did not get beyond the project stage. However, elements of the "Jet Typhoon" project can be found on the later HFB 320 "Hansa Jet". Another project, the Messerschmitt Me 408 "Rotor-Jet", also remained unfinished in the mid-1960s. Without state funding, the idea could not be realized. The relationship to the model series would only have been recognizable in the continuation of the model number, but not in the name "Taifun".

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