7:40 pm, October 15, 2011
FRESH from its 900-mile jaunt across France, our Ark Royal has met one of its ancestors.
And what an ancestor it is. Volvo kindly brought along a 1962 Volvo P1800 to the Car Dealer offices yesterday for us to have a play with – and it fell to me to test, prod, poke and drool over the legendary Volvo.
That’s exactly what it is – legendary. Apart from the Volvo 240 series, the P1800 is perhaps the most important car in the Swedish firm’s history as it was the perfect embodiment of the firm’s ‘wanting to do things differently’ mentality.
Up until the P1800’s debut in 1961, Volvo had been making slightly quirky saloon cars in the shape of the PV544 and the Amazon. And the P1800 helped a little way in changing people’s perceptions and arguably paved the way for the R-range of sporty Volvos and certainly the C70 coupe of the late ’90s.
This particular car belongs to Volvo and has only recently returned to the roads. It has sat still for many years and has been rolled out this year to celebrate 50 years of the P1800 – only needing some fuel, an MOT and some brake hoses to get back to road-worthy condition.
With all of this running through my mind and the de-dede-doo-la-doo-doo theme tune of The Saint accompanying me, I pulled out the choke and clasped the gargantuan thin-rimmed wheel for a drive along the south coast.
That wheel might be big but it’s linked up to a steering system that’s lovely and direct and skinny front tyres. The 90bhp 1780cc engine was beautifully sweet – save a slightly slipping clutch – and it was mated to a four-speed ‘box with the desirable period option of overdrive. It felt delightfully mechanical in a way that no modern car could ever hope to re-create.
Baggott in the Ark Royal and I made a unplanned rendezvous by the beach to snap these pictures you see here. And really, the exercise only really served to show that the only thing these cars have in common are the badges on their noses.
At launch in 1998, much was made of the S80’s Swedish minimalist ergonomics. And that is true. But in comparison to the P1800 – with unbearably charming ’60s switchgear and dials – the S80 is a victim of modern safety concerns.
Perhaps I am being a little too mean. The two cars do get looks from passers-by. This, obviously has nothing to do with the harriers mounted on the S80…
Read more of the P1800 in a forthcoming issue of Car Dealer
