In the post WW2 era there have been few car manufacturers ridiculed as much as Volvo. Volvo drivers, just for being Volvo drivers, have also copped a fair amount of stick.
The origins of the satire were sowed by Volvo itself when it produced safe and slow boxes starting with the 142/144/145 series. Obviously Volvo drivers took the cue and drove safe and slowly. And, they wore hats.
In Australia just a few years back, by which time Volvo was again making stylish cars, Volvo Australia lampooned the image of the Volvo driver with a television advertising campaign aimed squarely at `Bloody Volvo drivers.' By sending themselves up they took the sting out of Aussie folklore, enabling sales to progress with their latest, far more fashionable models. The campaign worked.
Volvo didn't always built boxes for hatted box heads. As our images show there was a time when Volvo manufactured a sports car of classic lines and beauty. The P1800 followed by the 1800E. But for the Swedish maker is was a hard slog. In the early 1950s it brought out a P1900 sports car which excited the motoring public enough to sell 68 units.
No doubt these are now collector cars, if only for reasons of rarity. Luckily Volvo did not give up. The man behind the new Volvo sports car was engineering consultant, Helmer Pettersson whose earlier Volvo history includes the PV444.
His son Pelle was responsible for the design and three prototypes were built and Helmer drove one of the cars to Osnabruck in West Germany to the Karmann headquarters, looking for someone to tool up and build the car. Karmann, of course had a strong association with Volkswagen, and VW objected.
Eventually Volvo contracted Jensen Motors to build 10,000 P1800 bodies, which it sub-contracted out to Pressed Steel, and the bodies were then united with other components at Jensen. In late 1960 the first production car hit the showrooms. It was powered by a 75 kW four cylinder 1780cc engine with dual SU carburettors.
But, it was the car's appearance that stole the show. It was more Italian than Swedish in appearance and had a monocoque body. The P1800 cannot be written about with a major digression.
In 1961 a new television series was in the planning stage and was based on the Leslie Charteris character, Simon Templar, known as The Saint. The Saint was a familiar detective character, well known to fiction readers. He was also quintessentially British. When Patrick McGoohan was not able to be signed up for the job, Roger Moore was.Moore went on to star as 007 in the Bond movies, a character loosely based on Queenslander, Sidney Cotton. As a British sleuth The Saint needed an appropriate car, and there was really only one choice: the brand spanking new Jaguar XKE or E-Type.
Fortunately for Jaguar, but bad luck for the producers, E-Types were selling like bangers and mash at a corner pub, and Jaguar could barely keep up with demand.
So the extra publicity was pointless.
They scouted around for a replacement car and soon came across the Volvo. Problem solved and Simon Templar had a distinctive sports machine. Little did Volvo know – or the makers of The Saint – that the series would be a smash hit and lead to a massive windfall for Volvo P1800 sales. Ironically, Volvo sold the car to the producers, and gained more publicity than they could ever have dream of.
This was one of the first cases of a new car being used in a TV show or a movie to promote the car and as such set a trend that continues today.
In the end Jensen produced around 6000 cars before build quality issues saw Volvo take production to Sweden and in 1963 a P1800S hit the streets.
In 1966 the four cylinder engine was updated to 86 kW. In 1969 the B18 engine was replaced with the 2-liter B20B variant of the B20 giving 89 kW, but retaining the designation 1800S.
For 1970 numerous changes came with the fuel-injected 1800E, which had the B20E engine with Bosch fuel injection and a revised camshaft and produced 97 kW from its 2-litres.
Top speed was around 190 kmh and acceleration from 0-100 km was 9.5 seconds. In addition, the 1970 model was the first 1800 to appear with four-wheel disc brakes. Prior to this, the 1800 series had front discs and rear drums.
Interestingly, when Volvo produced the nifty little C30 a couple of years back it called on some design cues from this classy little sports car, in particular the all-glass tailgate from the ES (station wagon) model.
We found our featured E1800 car at the Cleveland Auto Spectacular in Queensland.
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