(first posted 4/18/2013) This is a rather surprisingly ambitious effort for Volvo to undertake in 1952. The Philip was clearly intended for American consumption, as a largish 3.6 liter V8 powered sedan wouldn’t have gone over well at home or in Europe in 1952. That its styling was a pretty blatant rip-off of the 1951 Kaiser is indisputable, right down to the dip in the windshield (but without the center divider). But even more modern, in several respects; almost makes the Kaiser look old. Wonder how “Dutch” Darrin would have felt about that? Maybe Kaiser would have wanted to buy the V8 from Volvo, though, since they were in bad need of one. Or just buy the blue prints instead of developing of their ill-fated and ugly Henry J.
This was obviously not just something to show at the auto show with a non-functional engine, like some of GM’s Motorama cars of the time. The 3559 cc V8 was actually put into production, to power Volvo’s Snabbe truck, which made it a bit of a hot rod for the times, as well as a gas hog.
Volvo designer Jan Wilsgaard styled it, who also designed the 122 “Amazon”. FWIW, wikipedia has a line about the Amazon’s styling, saying that Wilsgaard was inspired by a Kaiser he saw in Gothenburg’s harbor. That never made any sense to me, since the Amazon looks much more like a 1955 Chrysler. Obviously, this is the car that must have been the result of that encounter.
I’m trying hard to imagine how this might have gone over if Volvo had gone ahead with the Philip. I guess they did too, and they probably made the right call. Still…
Nice. Now where are the interior shots to see if it has a Kaiser-like interior or not, Paul?
Here’s a quick pic from my Volvo: The Cars From the ’20s to the ’80s book: Nice upholstery!
I kinda like it…it reminds me of a K car, in that it is styled like a big car only made smaller, rather than just a quirky small car for it’s own sake. It is sorta elegant.
The front looks more like Willy’s Aero – If i didn’t read the headline, i would have thought it was a concept car after Kaiser bought Willy’s.
Never seen this before, I like it! Especially that front end with almost-dual-headlights, many years ahead of its time.
Nice,I’m sure it would be popular with the rock n roll crowd among the Crestas,Zodiacs and Yanks.That’s a very unusual but attractive colour.
Pre-PV Volvos were quite American in style and architecture, so it doesn’t surprise me that the company would toy with reviving that direction, in the anticipation of increasing affluence in the ’50’s.
The more I stare at it the more I see the Dodge Avenger actually…in the rear 3/4 view.
Maybe they could have sold them through Sears instead of offering the Allstate the true badge engineered Henry J.
Going on vacation…. no internet, phone etc.
Just want to thank everyone responsible for a great Lincoln-Volvo week.
Really appreciated it.
Thanks.
Before the war, and before the “peoples car” PV444, Volvo was known as a quite stodgy and semi prestigious brand, very much like the contemporary Buick. And they were a strong seller in the taxi/livery market. They even had a separate line of cars for that market, called the TR670-series, as opposed to the more civilian PV650-series.
The TR-line was beefed up, Checker-style, in several aspects. Longer wheelbases, beefier frames, a higher roof-line, divisons and partitions. They had a taxi-version, but also a more luxurious limousine version. So, Volvo had more or less the entire Swedish taxi-market for themselves, even up to the middle-50’s. The more luxurious cars were popular as company cars for the heads of large
companies.
The successor, the PV800-line, was presented in 1938, and produced for twenty years, after a facelift in 1950. The facelift made use of the new company design language, with a look very much like the new PV444. It was produced for so long simply because their were no suitable alternatives. Though in the mid-50’s, it was really long in the tooth with its 30’s technology.
So, after the PV60 was discontinued in 1949, Volvo didn’t have any large car offerings for the civilian market, and the PV800 was seen as really old. And as they didn’t have any replacements, they lost out on that entire market. And they always wanted back, and they tried tapping into that with different possible successors.
The Philip should be put in that context, because otherwise it didn’t make sense. In the end, the market was deemed too small to afford a V8-offering, so, the project was put on hold. The Philip was a fully functioning car, and was used as a company car for the heads of one of Volvos subsidiaries, the tractor maker Bolinder-Munktell. It wasn’t until 1969 and the 164 that Volvo had a six-cylinder offering, after a twenty year absence in that market sector.
I never knew this existed. How cool! You are right, it is almost a copy of the Kaiser. Widows peak over the windshield and the “Darrin Dip” on the rear door beltline. Even the wheelcovers look like a copy. It is a very attractive car.
It may not have done well in Europe, but it would have been better than any of the smaller cars that were actually built here in the US. Ditch the V8, use a nice 6 instead, and it would have made quite a nice car. Scale is hard to gauge, but this looks to be right about the size of a Studebaker Champion. Why, oh why couldn’t Studebaker have done something like this for its 1953 model instead of those awful sedans that they ended up building.
What a lovely car! I am assuming the cut lines running back from the front wheel wells mean that the entire front of the car opened up for engine access. And what are those raised sections at the end of each front seat back? Too far out for headrests, too early in time for shoulder harness attachment points. Styling feature to help emphasize the widow’s peaks? What a lovely car!
Where in the world did you find this Paul? This from the time I was reading every magazine I could get my hands on and I don’t think I ever saw one before. Don’t know the actual size but looks like Holden size or thereabouts. Might have been a lot of fun to drive.
When I was learning to drive the world was full of used hudsons, fraziers, studebakers etc. I think this would have fit in very well.
Hey Tom! There was even a limited edition diecast model.
Cool! I’m guessing it was by Robeddie, which was a part of Brooklin Models and offered various vintage Saabs and Volvos. They were a bit too rich for my blood at over $100 a pop, but very nice nonetheless.
Philip appeared in a Swedish TV documentary about the first 75 years of Volvo. Here’s a dashboard shot – quintessential early-fifties American. There are three other photos at Philip’s IMCDb page.
A commenter there asks if Volvo actually bought the tooling from Kaiser? Or maybe just surplus parts for the prototype?
A Volvo with factory fender skirts…amazing.
This is a surprisingly attractive car, even though it borrows its looks from the ’51 Kaiser.
A Volvo yet, who knew?
From the rear view it looks more like a 55 Studebaker to me. I see the Kaiser in the front view and the roof/window lines. Though I read a lot of auto magazines during the fifties while I was growing up, I never heard of Volvo until a friend’s family bought one in 1961. One ride in it convinced me that it was a well-built car. I never bought one until 2011 and have to say I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
I remember seeing this car in US and European magazines, back in 1953. If memory serves, it was shown at the Paris Exposition that year. There were rumors that Volvo had bought some body stampings from Kaiser and also that their 122 model (aka Amazon) used pressings from the Willys Aero. AGB
Of all the good looking cars of the 1950s why bother copying one of the oddest ones of them all? This is why the Japanese ultimately ate Volvo’s lunch and the Chinese ended up buying that lunch in the form of the company as a whole.
So you’re placing the blame of Volvo’s ultimate sale to Geely, after going through the Ford PAG wringer, on peculiar styling choices? I don’t think that line of thought flies as a whole.
makes you wonder what the Kaiser COULD have been.
It probably would’ve flopped badly in America – early ’50s buyers weren’t ready for a “Camry”, a car aimed straight at mainstream-American tastes and wants from a foreign manufacturer.
In Europe they could’ve gotten their traditional chunk of the Swedish market and maybe non-car-producing countries’ high end if they had ditched the V8 for a “B4-and-a-half” straight six.
I’ve always heard that the Volvo 122 Amazon was supposedly inspired by the 1952 Willys Aero, although I’m inclined to think the resemblance was merely a coincidence.
The Willys Aero went into production in 1952 and later that same year Kaiser purchased Willys. There were even false rumors that the Volvo 122 Amazon was built using the tooling from the Willys Aero. (The Willys was a slightly larger car and there were no parts in common.)
I quite like it, but it’s similar enough to the Kaiser that I think a lawsuit might have resulted had they attempted to actually sell it in the American market.
Cool alternate-universe-Kaiser take though, and I like the color as well. I don’t suppose the prototype exists anymore?
Does this car still exist? It’s hard to tell if any of the photos in the story or comments are contemporary. I remember this car from a b/w picture in Richard Langworth’s Kaiser-Frazer book, but had no idea it might still exist.
I like the idea that it may have been at least partially intended as a new senior/taxi model, but that assumes the dimensions are similar, which they probably are if the US market was also a consideration. But I suspect some kind of smaller six would have been used in the home market, likely a 3-liter, since that seems to be the general European big car size limit around then.
Maybe Kaiser would have wanted to buy the V8 from Volvo, though, since they were in bad need of one.
3.6L was way too small to haul a Kaiser around, would not have offered any advantage over the 226 six Kaiser already had in production.
Now a Studebaker V8 suitably bored and stroked to 289, as Studebaker did for 56 would have been just the ticket, vs Potter’s 288.
This Volvo, distributed by Kaiser to prevent an infringement suit, would have arrived too late to prevent the birth of the Henry J, and was far too big anyway.
The thought crosses my mind: Kaiser was obligated to produce a small car as a condition of receiving an additional loan from the RFC. Dutch Darrin suggested a cut down version of the big Kaiser, but Henry Kaiser didn’t want to pay Darrin’s royalty on another design, so settled on the Henry J design that was produced because it was cheaper to obtain. So maybe Darrin took his small car sketches and made a call on Gothenberg?
To get the RFC money, the Henry J had to meet a very stringent price target. That’s one reason it was such a stripper. It didn’t even have an opening trunk lid.
The designer was a young Jan Wilsgaard (1930-2016), Volvo’s chief designer for a very long time, who also did the Amazon, the 164, etc. The Philip would have been the range-topper, and the P179 “Margaret Rose” (pic below) would have replaced the PV444 by about 1955. But the whole plan was ditched, no doubt wisely, in favour of the more realistic Amazon.
The P179 nose presages the 164, in a ’50’s way. I like it!
I had no clue this existed! More obscure than the P1900.
Oh yes, it does still exist. I have seen it (and touched it) in the volvo museum in Gothenburg this summer.
I find it odd that this is the American design that Volvo chose to be so inspired by. The Kaiser always seemed to me to be an ungainly (illogical?) collection of curves and angles, trying too hard to be modern or futuristic in the fast-changing car design world of the early 1950’s.
For the company that Volvo became, the most compatible design of the time (if you exclude the already retro Plymouth) was probably the 1950 Ford, although there’s some of the Ford’s basic design simplicity in the front end. Arguably, Volvo had major second thoughts themselves, and decided a few years later that the early ’50’s Plymouth was indeed their soulmate. The rest is history 🙂
It’s interesting to think how Volvo might have been a very different car company if they had gone ahead with this. Or, conversely, to speculate whether they would have survived. Once you jump the ‘style’ tiger, the risk of being eaten is very high.
I notice this car doesn’t have any vent windows, front or rear, unusual for the time. Being a Volvo, of course, it had to have mud flaps. You can take a Volvo out of the country, but…
No one knows the outcome of history not written, but Volvo were probably wise to leave this one alone if it would have been introduced in the States. The primary niche for imports was sports enthusiasts or academic oddballs, and this car looks too conventionally American for that market. It’s surprising to me that it even got built, given the flaky Kaiser detailing. I like the looks of the ’51 Kaiser because it’s a clean take on the modernized 3 box convention of that era. That said, it’s a strange candidate for emulation unless Volvo hoped to make a deal with them to import. If the size was similar, one would imagine this look doing better than the Allstate, especially if the luxo interior could be part of the package. Would the labor and import costs situation allow favorable pricing? Could it have stood up to the Ford/Chevy price war?
Any length, width, height, weight figures? I assume it’s smaller than a full-size American car, which is a plus in my book. I think it resembles the Kaiser but is better-looking. Compared to the Kaiser, the instrument panel is less stylized and more straightforward.