RE: Volvo P1800
Actually the build quality was not the reason that Volvo brought production
home to Sweden, They had not originally considered that the car would be as
popular as it became and figured that a low production model could be more
economically built by a proven low-production builder.
Jensen had a long history of building bodies and doing final assenbly.
Before WWII, Jensen made mid priced, high performance sports cars with
American Ford V8 chassis and I've seen a beautiful dual cowl pheaton Jensen
with OHV Nash running gear. After the war Jensen built the bodies for the
Austin A40 Sports, and the first Austin Healey roadsters and, in turn,
Austin supplied the running gear for the first big postwar Jensens (I think
these were called Interceptors).
Volvo had introduced an unsucessful and quite odd looking low production
sports car in the 1950s that could rival some of the Japanese designs of
the same era! Managment might have been a bit gun-shy at setting up full
production of an unknown guantity with the P1800.
The easiest way to regognize a British P1800 is that the front has a pair
of bumperettes that turn up towards the grille and the others have a full
width bumper. The early ones came with the dorkiest fullsize hubcaps, but
most have been lost by now.
Cheers,
Rick Feibusch
Venice Beach, CA
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