We’re going just a bit out of strict chronological order here, for which I apologize. This COAL deals with the first “foreign” car I was ever exposed to, a car that, as I look back on it, may have had a longer-lingering effect on me than many of my subsequent daily drivers. In the late spring of 1964, Mom was working from our Morris Plains, New Jersey home, instead of in her office at Silver Burdett.
Mother had been diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia, an insidious form of blood cancer that starts in the bone marrow blood cells, eventually spreading through one’s bloodstream and affecting other organs in the body. She had decided not to share the seriousness of the situation with either my father or with eleven-year-old me, presumably realizing there was little that could be done to change the inevitable outcome.
In those days, she was copy-editing from home when her condition permitted. Thick Manila folders were filled with double- or triple-spaced typewritten galleys, which Mother would carefully annotate in colored pencil, surrounded by the specialized reference books and dictionaries she used for research and fact-checking. During those times, her periodic rustling of paper and flipping of pages became a faint but satisfying life-measuring tempo.
Now and then, one of Mother’s work colleagues, Peggy, would arrive to ferry the edited galleys back to the office or to drop off another tranche of the familiar yellow onion-skin pages for her editorial attention. Once, probably as much to get me out of the house as anything else, Peggy invited me to accompany her on the short drive to the office and back.
A second cousin, twice removed, to some late ’40s Detroit iron?
Her car was like nothing else I had ever seen until then, a white Volvo PV544 with a red/white interior, probably a ’62 or ’63 model. Getting into the Volvo, I remember being pleasantly struck by a variety of olfactory sensations. The rubber floor mats, the coconut fiber upholstery filling, the barely-detectable undertones of vinyl, all combined to create an ambience very unlike the typical Detroit “new car smell.” I was mesmerized.
At one point, Peggy, knowing my obsessive automotive enthusiasm, asked me if I wanted to “help drive”. Nervously placing my hand on the gearshift lever, I managed to execute a series of up-shifts from a stop, eventually engaging all four gears successfully (with some assistance, of course).
The 544’s unfashionably long gearshift lever carried over into the early Volvo 140-series.
The 544 wasn’t what you’d consider a particularly quiet vehicle, but its mechanical symphony gave the impression that it was a soundly-engineered piece of machinery. Its ribbon speedometer and long shift throws, among other characteristics, were outside the norm of my then-limited automotive worldview, as was the experience of wearing a seat belt for the first time.
That little Volvo made an enduring, if subliminal impression on me in the late spring of 1964. It would take another decade or so to learn how…
The 544’s predecessor, Volvo’s postwar 444. Those cross-country skis surely didn’t fit in its trunk.
Further reading:
Curbside Classics: Volvo PV444 and PV544 – I Roll, Starting Here
“She had decided not to share the seriousness of the situation with either my father or with eleven-year-old me, presumably realizing there was little that could be done … “.
Oh dear, such an example of unselfish love, choosing to assume the burden of fear and worry by herself, and for a while, sparing her loved ones from this pain for as long as possible.
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The closest I got to driving a PV544 was a relatively new 122 4 door 4 speed that belonged to a friend’s, girl friend’s, father. Not sure how that happened . . . but it was a long kind of test drive at moderate speeds down to my favorite ocean parkway in a just-starting snow storm. The 122’s interior looked a lot like the 544’s.
Funny how I can recall the car, the snow, the girl, and the helicopter while it was just a tiny part of my life, long, long, ago.
Helicopter? Oh yea. We were sitting on the 122’s front fenders watching the surf and the snow in the eastern-most Jone Beach parking lot #9 (lot 9 was washed away in a hurricane a few years later) when a low flying USCG helicopter, running East to West along the shoreline, passed us, spun around, and then hovered over us.
It shined a VERY powerful light on us, and did not leave until we got into the Amazon and started to move. It was probably just Coast Guard jokers having a little fun at our expense.
Not sure if I used the seat belt; there was no habitual seat belt muscle memory usage back then as there is now because there were very few cars with seat belts.
A 1960 B16-powered 544 was our family car from 1960 to 1964, when it was replaced by a 122S which remained with my parents until 1986, long after I’d grown up and left home. I almost bought a 544 as my first car in 1973 before saving a few bucks and getting a motorcycle instead. Though two years later when I did finally upgrade to four wheels, it was with my own 122S. So that metal dash with the (inevitably cracked) rigid vinyl-clad padding, the ribbon speedo, and the long shifter were the norm for me for a decade and a half. Ditto for three point seatbelts.
The 544 pictured is from the last year it was sold in the US. The slotted wheels and revised badging which also appeared on the 122S that year make it look quite “modern” to my Volvo attuned eyes. Of course a year later, the 140 was very modern in all respects, except for the pushrod B18 motor, ribbon speedo – and long gearshift.
I was always curious about these cars when I was a young boy. The bumpers reminded me of a VW Bug, which we had and which were a common sight. The shape was similar but different, and it was bigger than a Bug. It wasn’t until the Amazon and later Volvos came along that I recognized it for what it was, and since then I’ve always liked them. Another old classic I wouldn’t mind taking for a spin.
Some people thought the 444s and 544s looked a lot like 3/4 scale 1948 Fords.
At some point, in the late ‘60’s at least where I lived, there seemed to be more 544’s on the road than 20 year old Fords. An indicator of both the popularity of the Volvo and the short life span of cars then.
I came home from the hospital in my parents’ 1958 544 (named Erik the ared) when I was born in 1962. In 1967, when my sister was born they replaced it with a Saab 95 named Sonia (Mom’s family was Swedish). The Volvo was apparently the better car though: they kept it for 9 years but the Saab only lasted 5; it was replaced by a brand new Vega (which wasn’t any better).
Not a bad car, surely. But I like the handsome Amazon soooo much more.
Some cars have very memorable scents. I can still recall the scent of the rubber mats in the neighbor’s VW Squareback from 1970 and the odor of cocoa fiber floor mats in our Mercedes and BMW. It seems like German cars had the most memorable scent since the last car I recall having a distinctive scent was my 78 Scirocco’s trunk carpet.
Subsequent cars were either odorless, or occasionally smelled like wet carpet. Whatever happened to cocoa fiber floor mats? They were everywhere in the 70s and nowhere by the 90s?
Easily the longest gear shift lever of any car that I have ever driven.