There’s been lots of complaints about the lack of truly compact pickups available in the US. The Maverick (and Santa Fe) has significantly closed that gap. But not everyone wants to pay the rapidly escalating price of a Maverick. The solution is easy enough: there’s still plenty of older Volvo wagons around to cut up and turn into a compact truck.
The bed is quite decent sized. I didn’t measure it, but it looks to be at least as long as the Maverick’s 54″ bed. And the wagon’s rear tailgate has been repurposed very nicely as the partition.
The second row seat area has been turned into indoor storage, which realistically is how most double cab trucks are used much of the time.
It even sports a unique badge up front. Not sure if it has any particular meaning or origin, and Google doesn’t either.
Those quad sealed beam headlight look a bit odd on these vintage 240 series, but now yellowing headlight lenses and they are cheap and easy to replace.
The Volvo is 190.7″ long, so it’s a good 9″ shorter than a Maverick. And it’s RWD, which can be a boon when loaded. And it even comes with a stick shift. So be a real maverick and get out the Sawzall.
This thing has a REAL rear door dilemma …
You still have these in rural Oregon. They have all disappeared here in coastal Southern California. Biennial smog checks made it virtually impossible to keep many post-1974 cars registered here due to unavailability of stock parts.
I love it. One would be hard-pressed here on the east coast to come up with enough early 1980s 245’s to turn into one of these (it looks like he used at least two), but I have heard that there are still plenty out there in Oregon. All in all it’s a very clean looking thing. I’m not so sure about how the roof is handled as that’s the most awkward part…but I’m also not sure how a Sawzall conversion could have done any better. Cool!
How does it look like he used at least two?
The tailgate-as-partition is a different color than the rest of the car, so may have come from another car unless he just painted/bedliner’d it.
If it did come from another car, that may explain some of the impetus for this conversion, if the original wagon suffered some unrepairable rear-end damage.
” … unless he just painted/bedliner’d it.”
I think that’s what it is. The inner face of the tailgate is as white as the rest of the car’s body (look the image of the interior).
Yup, as SubGothius says a tailgate has been used to close off the passenger compartment, and that’s a black tailgate. I’m thinking that the donor car for the bulk of this was originally white. So that’s 2. And since we don’t know what’s under the hood (or the transmission…which I really hope if there’s a period-correct Volvo engine under there is a manual transmission), that could be at least one other 240 series car. Maybe more.
Although Midsommar could be right that the tailgate is just painted. It would be fascinating to know.
Since the inside of the tailgate is white and the rest of the exposed steel in the bed have all been painted black so I’m still going with it being all the same car. But that’s not to say there might be a part or two out of a junker.
Looks neatly done if a driveway conversion .
? Does Oregon not care that it’s now out of class ? .
Home made pickups were a thing for many decades but Ca. had a serious hard on for them so most are gone now .
-Nate
Its actually not that hard to re-title as commercial in CA, but there are additional annual fees, not huge for this weight class. But, a pickup, or cargo van, has to have commercial plates, no “personal use” exemption.
No, Oregon doesn’t care.
I find this VolCamino strangely appealing.
In Sweden, they have conversion kits to make your Volvo 240 (or 740 / 949 / 850) a pickup. Often used as so called EPA or A-traktors with blocked high gears.
Quite a piece of work, and I mean that in a good way. I saw a similarly proportioned, and also white, Jeep Grand Cherokee pickup conversion (1st Gen) just yesterday near Flagstaff AZ.
+1 on the Chevy Avalanche side triangle things, and the wooden workbench/ rear bumper!
I wonder if Stephen Hansen wishes he’d had this idea about 40 years ago and how big a bonus he’d have gotten if it made production.
I love it, but then I have a strange thing about cars converted into pick ups. I did this 1984 Vauxhall Carlton (Opel Record) years ago.
Saw this one some years ago – nicely done with a tonneau cover and (I think) a windscreen used for a rear window
That doesn’t look like a windshield. It appears to be a standard Volvo sedan rear window.
Swedish Baja
Hold on..
wait – WHAT?!
I hope whoever did this took into consideration that removing structural integrity from one part of a vehicle means making up for it in another area.
Otherwise it’s a pretty cool concept. A four door Volvo El Volvino! 😀 😀
Looks like structural reinforcement is what the diagonal braces behind the C-pillars (i.e. makeshift D-pillars) are for, and the tailgate-as-bulkhead appears to be welded in, so that reinforces the open end of the cabin.
I don’t think the “crew cab” looks very good. The most successful 240 pickups are the ones that use the quarter windows from a sedan to give a “coupe utility” effect like this one