Design is always all about compromise. When designing cars, there are some criteria that has to be met through a cost/benefit perspective. Very few designs are really uncompromised, and those that are, are seldom very practical. In a few happy instances the equation can give a satisfactory result. Sometimes, some things simply has to give. The question for the car designer will always be: What will have to go?
Jan Wilsgaard started designing cars for Volvo practically fresh out of his teens, he became head of design in his mid-twenties. He held that position for forty years, starting with the Volvo 120-series “Amazon”, and ending up in the early 90’s with the Volvo 850. And with almost all the other Volvos made in between. When someone holds a position for that long, one can follow their ups and downs, their trial and errors, one can see their evolvement over time. Most of all, one can see different themes explored, certain aspects and idiosyncrasies, their private pet-peeves.
The 1956 Volvo “Amazon” is a very beautiful design, especially in four-door and two-tone guise. It looks a little like an American car, designed by an Italian. Perhaps what Detroit would and should have come up with, had they put their hearts and minds into compacts in the fifties.
Six years later, Wilsgaard had to redesign the car as a station-wagon. As said in my earlier piece, that was a very heavy and expensive redesign. The quarter panel is straightened out, on the sedan it makes a quite significant downwards slope to the rear. The rear light bezels are lifted up in accordance, so there’s a straight line from front to rear fender. The rear tail gate goes deeper into the body, on the sedan the trunk is higher up and has a more rounded shape. And not to forget, the rear doors are completely different.
When Wilsgaard designed the 140-series, he made the sedan and station-wagon simultaneously. And to be practical, he made the doors interchangeable. And here rises the dilemma. A station-wagon is most practical in a boxy shape, while a sedan has a “notch” in its shape. The transition between greenhouse and deck lid is a tricky one, and works best in a continuous flowing line. That’s why most sedans of today aren’t notchbacks as one could think, but fastbacks.
To make the lines flow, Wilsgaard made a small but not insignificant slope to the rear of the roof section on the sedan. The slope is so subtle one doesn’t even notice it, but the car would look awkward without it. The windows and doors followed accordingly, and as the doors were the same on the station-wagon, they too had that little inclination, in spite of the fact that the roof of the wagon continued in a straight line. It’s a compromise, a simple sacrifice in favor of the sedan. The result isn’t any less obvious due to the fact that the doors were trimmed in chrome, in contrast to the bare metal body.
Another pet-peeve of his is a line of thought I will henceforth call “the bow”. It’s a slightly banana shaped bow from front to rear, making the car look like a muscle in contraction just waiting to flex. It makes the car have a slightly muscular or even vigoruous stance. It’s most visible on the earliest 140’s, it became more obscure as the car evolved into the 240. Speaking of which, here are the doors as they looked in the 70’s.
Volvo has essentially been a one-line car maker for most of its life. When newer lines have been developed, the older ones have been produced in parallel. In the 80’s the issue with the 240-doors became a little less obvious because of the fad with blacked out window trim. But it’s still there. And it’s still visible.
The advantage of conservative design is that it usually stands above mere fads. What was seen as old-fashioned already in its time becomes timeless as time goes by. I guess the Volvo design language has such good bones they can be clad in any guise and just look contemporary.
For the 700-series Wilsgaard reversed the priorities. This time around he made the doors in favor of the station-wagon, thus making a compromise in the other end instead. On the wagon the lines work perfectly, with a very harmonious result. Not so much on the sedan, with perhaps the biggest notch in notchback history. Though it is a rectilinear heaven of sorts, the car actually has the trademarked Wilsgaard bow.
With the 940, the lines are eased up a bit. But there’s a slight discrepancy between the rounded shapes of the rear, and the sharp lines of the doors. It’s still a compromise.
I consider the 850 being Jan Wilsgaards least compromised and most harmonious design. Here, the doors work well both on the sedan and on the wagon, and the lack of quarter lights makes for very clean lines. Though, the quarter panels on the sedan looks a little vague, there could have been a better execution of those lines. The bow is most visible on the wagon, the roof doesn’t so much slope but looks like it’s slightly canted, making the lines from the fender and the roof converge in the distant horizon. As compromises go, this is one the best executions there is, it is the end result of forty years of juggling with different design parameters.
With the debut of the S80 in 1999 Volvo had gone the full circle. In the modern age of today, the door dilemma has become a non-issue. Different cars based on the same platform can be made on the same factory line, seemingly haphazard. With a slight variation of the P2-platform, Volvo could make three virtually different cars, the S60, V70, and S80. And with those came three different kind of doors. It’s still a cost and benefit situation, but with the technology of today, the cost of making variations is irrelevant to the benefit of having those variations in the first place. The dilemma is no more.
great article. i always found the rear door on the 140 & 240 to be an amusingly practical swedish touch. i now know why i’ve always had a soft spot for volvos. they were were mostly designed by the same guy. it’s funny that his later cars were referred to as bricks when his earlier models had such great curves. let’s not forget the p1800.
not sure that i get what you mean by the bow. is it the subtle arch to the bodies, like a cat getting ready to pounce?
” is it the subtle arch to the bodies, like a cat getting ready to pounce?”
Something like that. I should’ve elaborated further, but I didn’t have the time. What I mean is, the “wholeness” of the body, including the greenhouse, looks slightly constrained, like a muscle waiting to flex, or like an animal in a cage too small, or for that matter, a cat getting ready to pounce. It’s a play with seemingly straight lines that actually aren’t straight. Like Parthenon in Athens, with a forced perspective that looks like it’s straight but actually isn’t. Another analogy is the contraposto pose, as seen in Michelangelos statue of David.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposto
Few things are as straight as they seem; and that can be applied to more than just car lines.
+1
The P1800 was designed by Pelle Petterson – the noted Swedish yacht designer.
Here’s how to do rear doors on a real station wagon …
+1
Pity the rest of the car wasn’t as reliable as those rear doors!
Yep, but Peugeot ALWAYS designed their station wagons newly up from the front doors from their sedans.
That is why on the 504 station wagon the wheelbase is longer.
@mark reimer.
Go down to Egypt and tell any 504 cab driver, in his face !
He’ll laugh at you in your face !
I had never noticed the doors on the 240 wagon, but now that you’ve pointed it out, I can’t not see the curve.
Also, I love the big Peugeot wagons–saw both a 504 and a 505 in the same day recently, after not seeing either for years.
I never noticed them either. My dad had a 144 sedan that I spent plenty of time driving but I don’t remember seeing any 140 wagons. My brother had a 240 wagon but somehow I never noticed that odd little detail.
A better shot dramatizing the differences in the rear doors between the 504 sedan and the 504 wagon …
Agreed, Unlike Volvo, Peugeot never made the doors of its wagons to be interchangeable with the sedans, certainly longer on the 504 wagons, to good effect. The French never seemed to focus on practicality.
And off topic, whats with the rubber bumper on the pre 74 sedan?
Let’s keep in mind that Peugeot used a completely different longer wheelbase “platform” for all their wagons, unlike almost everyone else. I’ve got a Peugeot wagon article that just needs to be written; and soon!
Well I’ll come clean and admit that my posting the Peugeot wagon pictures, while somewhat relevant, also constituted none-too-subtle lobbying to Paul with regard to his (previously) promised Peugeot wagon article. I’ll also admit to my belief that for me, the 504 wagon is one of the most beautiful wagons (and cars of any kind) I know, rivaled only perhaps by the Citroen CX Estate, which could however be said to be trying a little too hard by comparison …
The car in the picture was purchased by my mom at my suggestion in 1981 — the very last U.S. year for this model — when Peugeot had replaced the 504 in the U.S. with the 505, but didn’t yet have a 505 wagon. It was only offered with a diesel engine at that point and I still have the booklet somewhere, which merely proclaimed it the “Peugeot Diesel Wagon.”
The sedan shown belonged to a friend (who still has it, I believe; alas, our 504 had to be sold in 2007 after my mom suffered a stroke and could no longer drive) and is, I believe, a 1974. The rubber bumpers are original, Peugeot already having replaced the original nice-looking chrome items with them by that model year.
It just went to the top (actually, second from the top) of the to-do list.
Look at any 4-door Rambler Cross Country, Classic or Ambassador from about 1955 through 1962. The sedans and wagons used the same rear doors, but the roof of the wagon sloped back with the doors and then flattened out. I always thought it was an attractive design. It never occurred to me that there might be a practical reason behind it.
Both AMC and Volvo were small companies that had to be creative out of necessity. They were stuck with what they had, and simply had to make something out of a seemingly nothing.
Rambler introduced that feature in 1955 and it continued in more conservative form through ’65. On the early models, if I recall correctly, the sedan and wagon actually shared a roof stamping – the wagon roofline was literally grafted on to the back, hence the dip.
AMC was a master at this. The ’63 cars shared side window frames front and rear, and the ’64 American shared doors and other major components with the Classic. The Hornet coupe and sedan had the same roof stamping. And the AMX and Gremlin cost almost nothing to tool for. But every time AMC deviated from this tactic, it cost them dearly.
I toured the AMC plant at Brampton ON when I was a Boy Scout. That plant is now making the Chrysler 300, etc. I was very impressed by this. The neatest thing with the AMC’s was that the rdoor window frames were made from aluminum extrusions which were bolted to the steel door. The other neat thing was that the convertibles were run on the main line, with the tops added separately at the end.
A friend of my Mom’s had a ’74 145. She even let me blast it around once. Great fun, and, yes, at night you could read the speedo by it’s reflection in the door window.
If noone else had mentioned Nash’s “solution”, I would have brought it up. The 145’s doors look a little odd….but the Nash, especially with two tone paint…dang.
If anyone was in worse shape that Nash in the mid 50s, it was Studebaker. Studie finessed the issue for several years by only offering 2 door wagons. When they finally did offer a 4 door wagon, they did a nice job with it.
That’s no Stude….that’s a Packard! 🙂
That’s no Stude….that’s a Packard!
That’s a 57 Studie with 56 Clipper taillights
*This* is a Packard
And speaking about compromise gone totally in favor of engineering costs over design, how about the Pontiac Aztek?
Wilsgaard should have been hired as a consultant to prevent that mess.
Ingvar, thanks for this article. I have always loved Volvo cars, as my parents had them when I was growing up. Their first one was a bright red 1973 1800ES with black interior. They got it in 1974 when it was nearly new. They had until 1986, when they traded it in on a 1986 cream yellow 240DL wagon with GL turbine aluminum wheels. My mom currently has a black sapphire XC90 with the burnt orange interior. Interestingly, I see a lot of the 1800ES in my current V50, like the shape of the hood and the rear quarter window, while the ‘shoulders’ in the fender line remind me of the 240s!
Do you have any of the Stahlberg promotional Volvo model cars? They were sold through the parts department of the Volvo dealers. A friend of my father’s owned the Volvo dealer in Rock Island, so I had quite a few as a kid, but unfortunately most of them got broken or thrown out. Two or three I still have. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a number of Stahlberg models, one by one, to replace the lost ones, thanks to ebay. I think the oldest one I have is a circa 1968 142. Very detailed for their time.
I’ve been a fan of these cars for a long time, and the rear door angle does detract, but they’re such great cars anyway. The Amazon, of course, is truly classic. The 700, too me, has always been interesting. It is so square that it should be considered the box the K-car came in, but he pulled the design off with such finesse that it actually is, to my eyes, a classic design and extremely well done. If you’re going to make a box, that’s the way to do it.
Fantastic article. I’d never noticed the 140/240 wagons’ odd rear door treatment before despite my brother having a 240 wagon for a number of years.
The Amazon really was like a 3/4 scale ’55 Chevy. My dad and I had 3 of them in various states of viability at one point when I was in high school. They were so unlike anything else from that era in their practical sensibility – just well packaged, solid little cars. I only knew them as old cars but they must’ve really been something else when they were rolling off dealer lots new in the 60’s.
The boxy lines of the next few generations of Volvos was quite a departure from the Amazon but the purity (rear door detail notwithstanding) and tastefulness of the designs were not. Great to see them lined up like this so you can see the evolution. The 850 is about as elegant as a rectangle can get – a masterpiece. The styling of later models have grown on me and I can appreciate them now, but the 140-850 models will always be real Volvos in my heart.
Damn. Now I really want to find a 740/760 to clean up and use as an occasional self-driven limousine for when I want something with four doors to ferry around more than one adult passenger in my car. Probably V8 conversion – I’ve had both a NA and turbo’d 2.3L and as much as I loved them, I know I’d enjoy it more with a V8. A 3.0L DOHC I6 out of a 960 would be really sweet though and would keep it in the family. I wish I had time, space and money to indulge all my automotive fantasies.
I’ll second that. I’ve always lusted after the 740/760 Turbo, particularly the wagons. They were such understated, dignified cars. And great sleepers with the turbocharged, intercooled four. The 850 was great too, probably Volvo’s pinnacle, but I’d rather stick to the simpler, RWD cars.
It’s a shame that Volvo’s lost the plot so badly in the past decade or so. The brand was popular because it sold safe, sturdy, timeless-looking cars. The styling never changed, but that was okay because the cars lasted longer than anything else on the road. Now Volvo’s just another me-too Eurotrash brand with flavor-of-the-month styling and doesn’t do anything particularly well. Too bad.
Yes, a great article indeed. I’ve been aware of the 145’s rear door, and what Volvo did there, but I never thought through completely the problem with the 740. I almost bought a 740 turbo sedan, but couldn’t stand the very crude resolution of the rear roof/doors. It was to be my “executive company car” and I thought the wagon was superb looking, but I was too uptight to buy a wagon then for that role. Stupid! But the W124 was better anyway!
My dad had a 1988 740 Turbo sedan as a company car. Bright red with tan interior. It might have been boxy but it was sharp! Also the first car we had with an airbag.
That was a truly fascinating, highly educational article. Loved the muscle about to flex image and I, for one got it. Thanks for your unique and highly articulate perspective!
A really fun article. I is really nice how CC is going, with lots of guys contributing. Very nice tone about the place. I wonder if a CC alumni meeting is in order?
The Volvo Amazon wasn’t so much an American car designed by an Italian as it was an American car styled by Phil Wright and introduced in 1952 as the Willys Aero Eagle. The size was about the same too, although Willys used larger displacement engines.
You hit it. I knew that the Volvo reminded me of something american from the early 50s, but it wasn’t coming to me.
CJ, get an avatar here and on TTAC!
Bring on the PUG story I knew the doors on Ovlovs interchange Ive changed them over repairing a friends misadventure but this has been a facinating insight into the designers point of view.
Fantastic article. I had never known that Volvo’s styling was the result of one guy over all those years. Like many of you, I had never noticed the odd door treatment on the 240 wagons. Your discussion of the design compromises between sedans and wagons was interesting. I am reminded of the Chrysler hardtop wagons of the early 60s as a unique way of styling both to use the same doors. Also, I looked and saw that even little Studebaker used different wagon doors up until the end to avoid these compromises, even when the company could not really afford it.
The major reason why the rear doors on the Volvo wagon weren’t made differently was money – the greenhouse is the most expensive thing on a carbody to re-design or alter. By keeping the doors the same means no additional sets of glass, frames, gaskets, channels, etc.
Volvo wasn’t the only carmaker to do this, however. Look at the Camry wagons of the early 90’s – clearly a tacked-on box with an odd-shaped reverse-slant Gremlin-esque rear side glass. The Saturn wagons were even more obvious. Ditto for the Buick Roadmaster, even though the sedan’s rear doors had a divider bar that allowed a panel of glass to roll down all the way, as opposed to the Caprice’s 1/3 way down full glass rear door, the doors were different in shape as well, and the Caprice wagon was re-badged and trimmed in the Buick version to save those big bucks.
As a designer, it drives me crazy, however!
Final point: All cars have a slight “bow” to them. It’s an optical thing – if the lines were dead-straight, the car would appear to “sag”. Having that slight bow gives the car a visually-correct appearance. My old 1964 Chevy avatar above was a linear design that appeared straight as an arrow, but if you sighted along the lines, it did bow ever so slightly to give it the proper appearance.
Memories! That baby blue Amazon station wagon looks exactly like the first car I got to drive …sitting on my father’s lap at age 2 or 3 in the mid-70s.
Our Volvo was quite a remarkable car and some 30 years ahead of the sports wagon trend that took hold in the mid 90s (at least on this side of the Atlantic) with the Audi RS2 and BMW M5 wagons.
My father bought it new in 1965 and had it tricked out by the dealer with the high output B18 engine from the 123 GT and a limited-slip diff. It even had a leather-wrapped three-spoke steering wheel with a checkered flag in the middle. Sadly, that steering wheel is the only surviving part of the car, gathering dust in the attic.
In 1978, my mom lightly bumped into the car parked in front of her and the whole fender came off, revealing the extent of the Volvo’s rust issues. I remember shedding a tear as the mechanic drove it away with the torn-off fender latched to the roof rack.
Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wait long for consolation. A few weeks later, my dad purchased a lightly used 164E with plenty of goodies for a little boy to brag about: leather seats, a sunroof, air conditioning and most importantly, a speedometer topping out at 200 km/h…
Geez, I’m a little embarrassed that I never noticed that rear door! I’ve veen a Prancing Moose fan since High School, have owned a few sedans and known several wagons but that fairly obvious kink never caught my eye!
I remember noticing the rear door, and figuring it was shaped that way so it could be used on sedans and wagons. I probably read about AMC doing their thing along those lines so had the idea in my head somewhere.
The only Volvo I’ve ever driven was a white on tan wagon – 1968 or so, I suppose – that was a loaner. It had an automatic transmission and I thought it was a stone. It was nice enough inside but not as nice as the Rover 2000 that was in the shop. On those occasions when the Rover was working well it could take a Volvo with ease. It’s probably because of that automatic wagon that I never developed an interest in Volvos.
We had two (mostly) running 122’s at one point, one 4 speed and one auto. The 3 speed auto was definitely a dog – those 4-bangers can’t afford to lose oomph much to a torque converter. The 4 speed wasn’t exactly fast but it felt much more lively with the stick shift and was much more fun to drive.
The much later slush boxes in our 760 turbo and 960 were awesome – super responsive, almost read your mind when it came to kick-downs.
Just about had got over how the rear doors on the 140 wagons had driven me crazy for over 30 odd years now and you just HAD to bring it up again…
Volvos that look like Volvos.
Volvo will likely gain market share if it simply reintroduces the 240 sedan and wagon in the exact same shape with modern mechanicals.
The 240 still looks more “premium” than current Volvos, with excellent implmentation of the 5mph bumpers.
I like the way you think!
Absolutely RIGHT!!!!
I agree 100%.
Only if Volvo…..
Volvos that look like Volvos.
Volvo will likely gain market share if it simply reintroduces the 240 sedan and wagon in the exact same shape with modern mechanicals.
The 240 still looks more “premium” than current Volvos, with excellent implmentation of the 5 mph bumpers.
The 140/240 wagon makes me wonder why the rear quarter windows weren’t designed with an upward slope to their leading edge mirroring the downward one on the doors. Which would form a “V” shape…
Ahh, the 700 series. “30 grand of right angles” a mate called it at a Brisbane Motor Show one year.
If looks from salespeople could kill……………
And in the 140 range- to me its just that Volvo were too cheap to make a different upper door frame & glass.
If GM had done that, they’d be calling for tar & feathers.
I’ve always liked the Volvo 145 and 245 Volvo station wagons. They’re small enough to park just about anywhere, but have a big enough cargo capacity to load anything you need in the back.
The 1986-1995 Ford Taurus/Mercury Sable has a similar type compromise, using the rear doors of the sedan, with a slight taper toward the rear, on the station wagon. Ford’s solution was to make the door cutout straight on the wagon but that resulted in a gap above the door, widening toward the rear. It is somewhat disguised by the roof rack trim but it’s still there (click on the image to enlarge it, to see). There is also a crease in the upper door frame of the sedan that matches nothing on the wagon body.
In the 1996 redesign, the sedan door of the Mercury Sable was unabashedly used on the station wagons of both cars, with the swoopy rear side window of the wagon shaped to match it.
G. Poon, I owned one those Gen I-II Taurus wagons, and had forgotten about how FoMoCo finessed those sedan doors, etc.. I have a faint notion that the ’96 redesign (Gen III), with the back end “swooped in” a bit more, actually has less cubic-ft. capacity in back. (Too lazy to look it up.)
There’s also Chrysler’s A-body solution from the 60s, in two different iterations…
Here’s Gen 1
On the original Focus, Ford sprung for straight-topped doors on the wagon but used the same curve-topped ones on the 5-door hatch and the sedan, meaning that the top edge that was a continuous arc from front to rear on the hatchback;
…was awkwardly chopped downward behind the doors of the sedan.
Thank you! I’ve always been unsettled by the Focus saloon for some reason and assumed it was simply because the hatch is so much more common here, so they look “funny” because they’re not the version I’m used to seeing. Now you’ve drawn my attention to the doors, I suspect it’s been an unconscious response to that clumsy rear quarter all along.
It was the opposite in the US, sales-wise. I was sick of the sedan and it looked tired to me by the mid-00s while the 5-door (which was a late arrival for MY’02) still looks fresh and modern.
I’ve never cared for the gen 1 Focus sedan; the car looked so obviously meant to be a hatch with the trunk “chopped” in to please hatch-conscious Americans. Plus a lot of the lines around the trunk just seem fussy. The 3-door and 5-door do still look relatively fresh. It pained me even more so when the 3-door was eliminated in favor of the dumpy-looking 2-door sedan.
Though the Focus sedan isn’t as bad as the Fiesta sedan. Good night, was it ever more obvious that a trunk was tacked on as an afterthought? And yet, in this market, the base models are only available as a sedan and you have to go up a trim level to get the hatch. Absurdity.
Informative, entertaining, and a way with words. Hope to see more from you. Volvo is a car brand I liked for their rugged simplicity right up till they became a Ford. My personal experience was with a 700 with dissolving wire insulation. I generally had to have something that could carry tools and ladders so cars were out anyway. I have seen a couple of the brick wagons with trailers that did a trucks job.
Sorry to see the series on Volvos end. Maybe some day we can get one on the perfect service truck.
Ford Australia did the same trick with the rear doors for its Falcon wagon over many years.
The wagons were made on the same platform as the long wheelbase (Aussie) Fairlane version of the Falcon sedan.
They used the Fairlane rear doors on the cheaper Falcon wagon. The top edge didn’t align with the rear side windows, just like the Volvo.
They originally intended to do a Peugeot 504/505 style wagon with 3rd row seat for the EA wagon, which is probably why the roofline was awkwardly raised for the wagon. Otherwise sharing the 6-window Fairlane door on the wagon was a great idea. There was a prototype wagon in the Discovery Centre at Geelong (now closed).
The Volvo case is interesting – obviously it saved costs, but had they planned from the start to build the same basic body for 25 years I wonder if they might have done a different door frame.
These weren’t the best Fords, but I liked the wagon. Rear window was stepped up sort of like a clamshell or a CX/504 wagon. And the proportioning of volumes was right. Really let down by detailing; poor trim fit.
There was an EA-F wagon at the car show I attended last year (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/car-show-classic/car-show-classic-curblakeside-in-cambridge-ii-the-australian-alumni/) where the owner had painted the top of the glass and the D-Pillar. It was a good quality job and looked excellent – albeit the smaller side window made it look reminiscent of the XA-C in some respects.
I’ve got the original sketch of the EA with the third row of seats; it does kind of make the raised roof make sense – I’ll post it after work if I remember.
VW Passat B3 & B4: one of the cleanest wagons ever. Featured in CC couple years ago
Passat sedan: no compromise vs. wagon, both optimal shape
I guess Nissan thought the Armada looked better with the dip in the top of the rear doors. The Crew Cab doors are straight across the top. I always thought it would look better that way. But someone at Nissan spent the money to change the look. Never could figure out why they did that.
Retro longing for the Rambler wagon?
The windows of the 140 series Volvos weren’t “trimmed in chrome.” The frames were aluminum extrusions. When we took my family’s 1973 144 to Colorado for winter ski trips the window frames on the inside of the car would “frost over” like a chilled beer mug.
The best example of “the bow” wears a bow-tie and is often called a “box” in spite of its graceful curve.
Yes, and the -75 Seville. Though, they took the cue from the Rolls-Royce book of schooling, and made the bow canting slightly backwards, making the cars look like they are accelarating standing still. The trademarked RR “Waftability”. But it’s a neat trick, and makes for a vigourous stance, like a cat, just waiting to leap.
Good point about the earlier Seville… however, I’m not sure what you mean about the Seville’s bow being backwards. Can you explain?
Well, not exactly backwards. But it’s canting slightly to the rear, which makes it look like the weight transfer has been shifted to the back, like the driver just floored it. But it has that look already standing still. The bow leans to the rear, the greenhouse leans to the rear. RR made the same trick with the latest Phantom, which makes it look like it’s accelerating when it’s standing still. It’s just a subtle trick to the eye, but when the trick is used carefully, it make the car have a certain stance. Compare the photo of the Seville with the A-Body, which does not have that rearward stance.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1978-cadillac-seville-nope-nothing-wrong-here/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1975-1976-1977-1978-1979-cadillac-seville-gms-deadly-sin-11/
Are the wagon rear doors on those B-bodies (both 77-79 and later) interchangeable with the sedan doors? It’s hard to tell. The wagons certainly don’t awkward in profile, although the rear ends always looked much too wide to me.
A simple fix is to reduce the height of the rear cargo windows so that they meet the top rear corners of the passenger doors. Reducing the cargo roof height wouldn’t be needed.
Hi!
Here is a Picture of the clay model with straight upper line of the
Rear door, seems like it necessitated a strange rear end
Here is the clay model that tries to use a rear quarter Window that “meets”
The Window on the rear door.
Buy the Way, strange that Here in Sweden a Caprice is exotic, while a volvo is not,
And over there it is the other Way around.
Greetings, Chris !
Oh, and Here is the volvo P172 prototype P1800 succesor that never came to be, pity. Search “P172 prototype” to find out more. And there was the Zagato prototype also…
Damn those economists…
“Volvo has essentially been a one-line car maker for most of its life.”
Really? The 544, 120 series and P1800 were made concurrently for many years with entirely different chassis. The 120 series hung on until 1970, a full three years after the 140 series came out, and the 544 lasted in wagon Duett form until 1967. The 1800ES died in 1973.
Since Volvo took effective two-thirds control of DAF in the Netherlands, it produced the DAF 66 from 1975 until it turned out that remarkably awkward dumpling of a car, the 340 series in 1980, followed by the 480 and 440 series FWD cars from 1985, a sort of Mitsubishi in disguise with no particular styling merit. The 340 overlapped the 440 for some years as well. The author does not say, but presumably Wilsgaard was responsible for these car’s styling as well. Hmm.
We thus have the entire TWO year period from 1973 to 1975 when Volvo was a “one-line car maker” during the past 60 years.
I would acknowledge Wilsgaard’s best designs as the 120 series and the first 850, although the latter sported the general rear side window design of the 740, which put me off personally as even more of an angular brick than the 140/240 series and on par with a Billy bookcase from IKEA, while at least the 900 series looked a bit better evolution of the 740.
The rear door compromise of the 145 WAGON was pretty obvious from its debut in 1967 to us young rally enthusiasts of the time, and the added weight of the vehicle over the 544 and 120 series together with its looks that would suit a pipe-smoking grandad were a letdown. Still it is remarkable to think that a full up 144 weighed a bit less than 2800 lbs, about the same as a current Ford Fiesta ST, thought of as a subcompact featherweight these days.
The final real Volvo for we young enthusiasts was the 1968 123GT with the 140 series front seats. The 544, 120, 140, 160, 240, 740, 940 and 850 series cars were all assembled here in my hometown of Halifax, NS, so we did get to see a fair few of them. Toured the factory several times, where the lasting impression from my first visit in 1968 was the adjustment of door alignment by a hefty lad bouncing or levering on a 2 by 6 wedged between the door sill and door bottom. My later pal who worked there his entire career told me of the various bodges they used to get 544 panels to fit that included large rubber hammers – rather took me aback about my first car!
I note that the last three cars pictured in the article were designed under the aegis of Peter Horbury as Volvo’s chief designer hired in 1992, and who was also responsible for the first S40/V40 from 1995, so it seems a bit disingenuous to include them in an article about Wilsgaard, whose greater output I can only think of as somewhat vapid at best, while he simultaneously struggled with the rear door compromise of the 140/240. Since many here have admitted to not even noticing that finesse until this article pointed it out, perhaps it can be regarded as Wilsgaard’s real success, and I am not being cynical in saying so. It beats all the other solutions that used the exact same doors in both sedan and wagon versions of a vehicle.