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(04 July 2007)
One of the most beautiful European classic cars still available at an affordable price is Volvo's P1800 coupe.
The P1800 was thrust firmly into the public spotlight in 1962 through its role as the star car of the television series The Saint, however the Swedish beauty had substance behind its style and its sturdy underpinnings and ready parts supply today make it a potential and practical daily driver some four decades later.
The P1800 coupe project dates back to the late 1950s, when plans were first laid to build a sports car based on the rugged running gear of the Volvo 120 Amazon clothed in sleek sports coupe bodywork.
The man behind the project was an engineering consultant to Volvo, Helmer Petterson, who in the 1940s was responsible for the Volvo PV444 and the design work was done by Helmer's son Pelle Petterson, who worked for Italian coachbuilder Pietro Frua at that time.
Frua built the first three prototypes, designated P958-X1, P958-X2 and P958-X3 and in December 1957 Petterson drove the first hand-built P1800 example to the headquarters of Karmann in West Germany, in the hope that they would take on the tooling and building of the P1800.
A deal was agreed on, but in February, Karmann's most important customer, Volkswagen forbade Karmann to take on the job as they were afraid that the P1800 would compete with the sales of their own cars, and threatened to cancel all their Karmann contracts.
This setback almost caused the project to be abandoned. Other German firms including NSU, Drautz and Hanomag were also contacted but none of them was selected because Volvo did not believe they met their manufacturing quality control standards.
It began to appear that Volvo might never produce the P1800, but this motivated Petterson to obtain financial backing from two financial firms with the intention of buying the components directly from Volvo and marketing the car himself.
At this point Volvo had made no mention of the P1800, but a press release surfaced with a photo of the car, putting Volvo in a position where they had to acknowledge the its existence.
These events influenced the company to renew its efforts to build the car and it turned to Jensen Motors in West Bromwich, England, whose production lines were under capacity. Reputedly, the Swedish Company's then-Executive Vice Chairman insisted the cars be built in a country where he could play golf!
They agreed to a contract to build 10,000 cars and Pressed Steel's Linwood plant in Scotland was in turn contracted by Jensen to manufacture the body shell, which was sent by rail to Jensen where it was united with chassis components shipped from Volvo's Gothenburg plant. Finally, in September 1960, the first production P1800 left Jensen and went on sale.
Powering the P1800 was a new five main bearing version of the Swedish outfit's tough little four-cylinder unit, designated the B18B, developing 75kW (100HP) and driving the rear wheels through a four-speed M40 gearbox. It was enough to give the car genuine 100 miles per hour (160km/h) performance.
As time progressed, Jensen had problems with quality control, so the contract was ended early at 6,000 cars and in 1963 production was moved to Gothenburg, with cars produced at the Swedish plant identified by the model designation 1800S.
At the same time, the engine gained an additional 6kW, while in 1966 the engine was updated to 86kW (115 HP).
By this time, the P1800 was a cult car. A white Volvo P1800 (with the numberplate ST1) driven by Simon Templar, played by Roger Moore, was featured prominently in the aforementioned TV series The Saint beginning in 1962. Interestingly, Jaguar was first offered the opportunity to provide an E-Type car for the series but declined as they had too much demand already and didn't see the need for additional press. However Volvo jumped at the chance and reaped a significant sales increase. Later in the 1970s when The Return of the Saint was created, Jaguar made up for their mistake and offered the new XJ-S for the series.
In 1969 the B18 engine was replaced with the 2-litre B20B variant of the B20 giving 89 kW (118HP), though it kept the designation 1800S.
For 1970 numerous changes came with the fuel-injected 1800E, which had the B20E engine with Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection and a revised camshaft and produced 97kW (130HP) from its 2-litres without sacrificing fuel economy. Top speed rose to around 190 km/h and acceleration from 0-100km/h took 9.5 seconds.
In 1972 came the last model, the 1800ES, a hatchback version with an all-glass tailgate. The ES-model would prove to be very popular with future Volvo stylists, as a similar design was used on the Volvo 480 and on multiple concept cars, while the new Volvo C30 drew heavily on the ES design for inspiration.
For the P1800's final model year of 1973, only the 1800ES was produced. Total production of the 1800 lineup from 1961 through to June 27, 1973 was 47,492 vehicles.
This article is from Shannons Insurance - use link below:
http://www.shannons.com.au/marques/marque-of-the-month/
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