(first posted 5/31/2014) Only Volvo could have built the P1800, introducing a new car in 1961 whose design had been fresh way back in 1957, at a time when styling was changing almost by the year, and then building it for what seemed like forever. Fins were so out by 1961; and the design of the rest of the car was looking a bit dated too. But then Volvo had a habit of this. The PV444 looked out of date when it was released, and then built for twenty years. The same goes for the evergreen 140/240 series, and the 700/900.
The P1800 was something of an enigma to me the day it was released, and this particular P1800 is still something of an enigma to me today. Trying to pin down the year it was built turned into quite the undertaking, and I’m still not 100% certain. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered; the P1800 transcended mere things like time and distance.
It did look rather fresh back in 1957, when this prototype X1 was built. Volvo’s first shot at a sports car, the P1900, turned out badly, with only 68 of them built. But Volvo was not to be denied a sports car, so in 1957 a new car, to be sturdily built out of proper steel was designed. Helmer Petterson, who headed up the development of the PV444, lead the project. And his son, Pelle Petterson, who worked at the Italian Carrozzeria Pietro Frua at the time, gets credit for the design. For some reason, Volvo denied that until 2009, but it’s been official since then.
The X1 certainly reflected the design idioms of 1957, with a decidedly Italian flair. Well, who in Europe in 1957 had any design flair other than the Italians?
The fins on its rear quarters were clearly influenced by the wild and winged Alfa Romeo BAT5 from 1953, which also inspired Virgil Exner’s 1957 fin-mobiles. One can find other influences; the egg-crate grille and front end styling is of course classic Pininfarina-Ferrari.
image credit: p1800.jd.free.fr
This picture of Pelle showing off his new baby to his future wife is pretty good proof that he was its daddy. The X1 was driven by Helmer to Osnabruck, Germany, in the hopes that Karmann would tool and build the P1800. Karmann was quite interested, but their biggest customer, VW, was decidedly not interested in seeing a potential competitor to their recently released Karmann Ghia, and put the kibosh on that.
The Karmann Ghia, which went into production in 1955, is the closest analog to the P1800, in more ways than one. Neither of them were true-blooded sports cars, although the P1800 had much greater performance with its newly developed B18B engine that developed a healthy 100 hp. The P1800 had a top speed of some 110-120 mph, depending on the final drive ratio. The KG had all of 36 (gross), 30 DN hp. But they were both attempts by makers of solid sedans to break into the stylish, sporty coupe market.
Of course, the Karmann Ghia also became an evergreen, and even outlasted the P1800 by one year, finishing up its remarkable 20 year run in 1974 (KG CC here). But the Ghia had one advantage: it was designed before the fin era, and as such, its design aged better. Or it least in some folks’ eyes.
Other German firms were contacted, but various impediments kept arising. The P1800 project was essentially abandoned. Petterson made efforts to find investors and build the car himself. In the end, Volvo’s pride forced it to show the car at the Brussels Motor Show in 1960 and get serious about finding someone to build it. That turned out to be Jensen Motors, which had spare capacity and contracted to build 10,000 of them.
The 1961 P1800 appeared with only some very minor changes from the prototype, the most obvious being the full wheel covers, and a number of other details to rationalize its production.
The P1800 got an unexpected boost when Jaguar turned down the offer to have its new XK-E used as Roger Moore’s car in the new 1962 tv series “The Saint”. The show become a big hit, was syndicated in the US, and lasted until 1969. Now that’s the kind of product placement makers nowadays would pay big money for.
Here’s a nice little collection of Simon Templar’s P1800S in action.
If Volvo had waited a few years and designed their new sports coupe in 1961, it might have ended up looking a bit more like an affordable version of this. One can dream…
But instead, it soldiered along with its fins, getting little minor changes that were cues to it being a new car at the time. This 1970 P1800E that Jim Cavanaugh shot and wrote up here in his excellent CC sports contemporary Volvo wheels of the time. Of course there were mechanical changes to go along with exterior and interior ones. In 1966, the B18 engine got a boost to 115 hp. In 1969, it was bestowed the new 2 liter B20, with 118 hp. 1970 brought Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection and 130 hp to go along with the new P1800E designation.
The last year for the coupe was 1972, by which time it also got a blacked out grille, along with its new stablemate, the shooting-brake 1800 ES.
The ES had a short life, from 1972 – 1974. After several proposals for a more radical re-style were rejected, an in-house design by Jan Wilsgaard was chosen to give the P1800 a brief life extension. Its story is here.
This fine baby blue P1800 is one of three in Eugene, but the only one that lives on the street. I shot it a couple of years ago, and at the time, I was a bit stumped about its exact vintage. It has the distinctive “bull horn” bumpers of pre-1965 cars, but the grill is from a later vintage, 1967 and up.
This is what really threw me, as these badges on the C Pillar were only originally on the Jensen-built 1961-1963 models (production was moved to Sweden starting with the 1964s). I found an excellent site with all the year-to-year changes for the P1800, and it only confused me further, at least for a while.
For instance, the all-white turning light lenses are from 1961-1963. Other details, like the chromed fresh air intake behind the hood, is clearly from 1964 and up.
And that design of slotted wheel didn’t appear until 1965. But by then the “bull horn” bumpers in front were gone.
It took some digging, but I’m now quite certain that this is a 1964, but between chassis numbers 8001 and 10000, because it has the new air intake that came after that #8001, but it still has the older vent window latches from before #10000. But why it has the later grille, wheels and the earlier “Volvo” badge on the C Pillar can only be attributed to an owner’s mix-and-match redecorating impulse. It kept me scratching my head for quite a while. And maybe I’m still wrong. Before we leave this picture, I will say that the earlier P1800 interior is tasty, in a 1957 sort of way.
The P1800 is a rolling living-history museum, and there’s so many angles from which to savor its period styling.
This one being the most obvious one.
Only 47,492 of these anachronistic cars were ever built in its lifespan. It had a limited following, as it really wasn’t quite agile enough to be attractive to the true sports car set. And it certainly didn’t appeal to those looking for a stylish coupe in the current fashion. And it was always on the pricy side. So who exactly would have bought one of these in its day? A high school science teacher?
That’s what Irv Gordon was when he bought his new P 1800S in 1966. He’s long since set a world record for miles on a car, and rolled up the three millionth mile last summer. Now that’s a very narrow niche of the market, folks who were looking for eternal life in a sporty coupe. As well as eternal fins. But Irv’s P1800 delivered both of them, and it still manages to look great, fins and all.
As does this one, regardless of what year it’s from. When you’re immortal, you stop worrying about little cosmetic details like that.
Not suddenly, it’s 1957!
I had no idea that the Volvo 1800S was quite rare, because I rarely see 1800s, but when I do, I often see them in bunches. When I was in high school, one of my clarinet teachers lived with her brother who had three 1800s: an 1800S and two 1800E mini-wagons. I saw another multiple 1800 household in the area last year. They are probably not every Volvo fan’s taste, but for some like Irv Gordon, they become an obsession.
It’s not so much the dated styling details, that make the exterior on these so interesting for me. It’s the exaggerated body proportions on both the P1800 and the 1800ES, that allow them to remain distinctive and attractive years later. And the impression that the car is in motion. Even when parked.
The ideal scale of the grille in relation to the hood and headlights, the long length of the hood and the sculpted and sweptback greenhouse, are what make the styling almost classic. As well as the clean, well proportioned bodysides and raked door openings. Even the discreet location of the door handles is well done. The details like the fins and the curved chrome bodystrip are obsolete, of course. But it’s the scale and proportions of the overall exterior, that keeps it dynamic. The Karmann Ghia, in spite of it’s curves, looks more static and jellyfish-like. Blobby. And the similar Studebaker Hawk is less taut, and not so well proportioned IMO. The curved inward trailing edge of the rear fenders, looks very 1950s. But it does evoke forward movement, if in a cheesy 50s way. The P1800 and 1800ES look like they are in motion, even where parked. Thanks to unique and interesting exaggerated scale and proportions. Less so, the dated styling details. Nice article!
I’ll add that I think the P1800 and 1800ES look best from a distance, where you can appreciate the proportions and appearance of motion. Up close, the visually heavy trim and details obscure the overall clean design. And look very old fashioned. The basic proportions and the nice touches creating this impression of movement, aged better than a number of specific details.
The general lines are such that my first thought is, “Fins? What fins?” Compared to the rest of the car, they’re barely noticeable.
Agreed. I think this is because the fins are horizontal continuations of the belt line; unlike typical American finned cars of the era, the fin doesn’t kick up beginning at the C-pillar. So in profile, it doesn’t particularly look like a finned design.
It don’t consider them to be that much of a fin either.
Even more than the Dino 308 GT4 of which I said this (elsewhere) the other day, the P1800’s greenhouse has a kind of fighter plane cockpit vibe to it. Not a modern fighter plane with a big bubble canopy, but a late-50s jet, back when nobody figured visibility or dogfighting was a priority anymore and designers were loathe to make the canopy any bigger than absolutely necessary, lest it add too much drag. The ’59 GM B-/C-body two-door hardtops have a similar flavor.
You can’t forget that the ultimate yuppie of the 1980’s, thirtysomething’s Michael Steadman, drove a P1800. In a show where every little detail had great meaning, that car stood out as much as his ever evolving, work in progress, house.
My rule of thumb for the Jensens was the chrome strip along the side. Jensens had a continuous strip from the front and the Volvos had a strip that continued from the door handle. Maybe there was a crossover period on trim as well. I love the polished discs of the first ones.
Correction. That site with the P1800 years is excellent.
On the 1800S in The Saint (because I went through this a while back), it’s worth noting that while it was indeed chosen in lieu of a Jaguar, that Jaguar was NOT the E-type, as is popularly reported, but the Mark X sedan. My source on this has confirmed that point with both the producers of the show and with Roger Moore himself.
As I understand it, Moore wanted a Mark X, which was pretty new at the time, so he suggested to the producers that they get two identical cars, one for use in the show, one for Moore to take as part of his compensation, with the proviso that he would make it available as a supplementary photo car. The producers were amenable to that, but Jaguar was neither able nor (according to Moore’s own account) particularly interested in going along. Moore suggested a Mercedes, which didn’t work out either, and finally proposed the Volvo, which is what they went with.
Mark X. If only…
No Moore Mark X…Roger, over and out.
Surely, you can’t be serious.
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
I wonder why they would have wanted the big Jaguar sedan instead of the sportier E-type? I’ve never really seen The Saint, so I don’t know that much about the show in general, but I would have thought that the small sportier car would be more in line with the image they wanted to portray.
I think a big Jag sedan would have been in character for Simon Templar, who in the Charteris books drove a big, fast (and fictional) car called a Hirondel. Jaguars at that point had a pretty rakish image (I think a fair analogy would be the LX-body Chrysler 300) and since the literary character’s car didn’t really exist, the producers had a fair amount of leeway.
The Mk10 would have been perfect thundering through some back-alleys on the continent. Hirondel as depicted in 1929…
Interesting, I never knew that The Saint was a book, I thought it was all made for TV.
Paul,
A quick update on Irv Gordon – he still has the 3-million-mile P1800 and continues to drive and enjoy it every day.
The engine has been rebuilt twice. The first time was at 680k miles, in the late ’70s – he was told that it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted that it be done anyway because he had never heard of an engine that could go that far without causing a problem. The first rebuild entailed installing a new water pump, new oil pump, and hardened valve seats so that the car could take unleaded gas. The second rebuild took place at 2.7 million miles, just five years ago, because it started to get tired while going up steep hills.
I know these facts because I personally know Irv. We see each other at big Volvo events on the East Coast, at least two or three times a year.
The biggest thing I took away from Irv and his amazing P1800 is…the seats. Most people who try to keep an old car serviceable well past its ‘use by’ date are normally most concerned with the drivetrain and sheet metal, but no one pays much attention to the ergonomics of where you’ll be sitting for all those miles. OEM seats are, for the most part, simply not designed for longevity.
Volvos are known for their excellent seats and Irv’s car is a testament to that, more than anything else.
The years pass…….
Irv passed away in November of 2018.
1961-73 – not a 20 year lifespan.
Sometimes I amaze myself. Or others, as the case may be. Is it a form of tunnel-vision? I must have had the 50s in my head way too much.
If there was a ’57 Dodge Challenger, this would be it.
Very interesting and informative. Sort of amazed at the steps you took to ID the year. You may be right about it hitting the streets already outdated but it sure had it’s fans. My first ship was the USS Oak Hill LSD7. The commanding officer of that ship drove one of these. I don’t know if the man lent his coolness to the car or the other way around but he sure had our attention when he drove that thing. That would have been 1964 and the car was not new. He had it when I checked on board in the middle of a pacific cruise in June so he probably got it not later than 63.
Memory won’t do better than that. Personally I like the car but know I love the shooting brake. I’m a sucker for wagons and the like. Btw Perry, I wouldn’t care what the engine was. This epitomizes Volvo to me. Rear wheel drive and solid. If I could draw one up it would be the shooting brake with a small block ford.
My favorite Volvo. Dad looked at one around the time I was 14 and didn’t buy it. Still shaking my head over that one, but then he did buy the Karmann Ghia that was later passed down to me so…
He apparently wanted something sporty because his brother had a Fiat 124 Sport Spider ‘vert, but didn’t want anything British or Italian seeing how much my uncle had to work on it.
The best looking Volvo,I don’t think I saw one in the 60s apart from models and the Saint’s one on TV.The Saint was able to catch Jaguars,Mercedes and American cars with ease on TV!
I think this is a ’64 rather than a newer model backdated with the bull horn front bumper. My Dad had two of these in the 70s, a ’64 that he bought used and kept for many years and a ’65 he bought from a friend, restored and flipped. The ’65 was the same blue as the feature car but had a black vinyl top. Those crazy 70s!
You can tell for sure it’s not a ’65+ by the exterior door handles. Up until ’64 they looked like the ones on the blue feature car. After that the door handle shape was changed so that it was a continuation of the chrome strip on top of the rear fender blade. A painful reminder of the new door handle shape was when I missed the clue for the last P1800 written up at CC.
The interior looks just like my Dad’s ’64 right down to the dash-mounted mirror and faded plastic tab at the end of the OD switch. That awesome looking Volvo emblem on the C-pillar was definitely not on our ’64. I think that, the tailpipes and door mirror are the only parts that have been changed from a real ’64. The wheels are ’64 and so is the grille except that it is painted black on the blue car.
A look at the cowl vent would help in determining the exact year.
The W110 Mercedes had the same styling problem, IMO. By 1961 those fins looked very antiquated, but MB only kept it in production a few years. Yes, I know, it was based on the 1959 W111. I still never liked the Heckflosse (Fintail) look, even at the time.
I agree with you on the fins. They looked ancient on the 1800S and gave the car a bit of a cockroach look. Interestingly they looked fine on the 1800ES wagon — it helped you could only see one side of the fin and the longer taillamps got rid of the ’49 Ford look.
I give Volvo credit for really embracing the fins in a way the MB mini-finned models never did
’49 Ford
Did Maxwell Smart also have one of these in between Sunbeam Alpines and Buick Opel GT’s?
86 had a Karmann Ghia for a year.
That’s what it was.
Only used in the opening credits, never on the show itself.
What did the KAOS bad guys drive when he had the VW? I remember Chryslers with Sunbeam and Buick Electras with the Opel. but what complimented the VW’s?
An associate at school had one of these. It was red, of course, and very nice. I don’t recall what year, though. When I told him my buddy up the street traded for a 1959 PV544, he would drop by often and we all would discuss that a Volvo was the ONLY foreign car each of us would consider owning! No beetles for us…
There was something quirky and cool about them, plus they were a ball to drive around town.
I told my story about my buddy’s ’59 the other day.
Some great CCs on the film including the Saint’s Volvo, a show I watched as a kid, it must have been the worlds fastest Volvo as Gem said it could catch anything.
Teeny little correction–the last year for the ES was ’73. Volvo discontinued it then because the ’74 U.S. bumper standards were prohibitively expensive for what was a niche vehicle.
Excellent treatment of a great find. I still go back and forth between whether I prefer the early or the later versions of this one.
Speaking strictly personal, I’d take them all!
Beautiful when new, beautiful now.
The grilles on the 1800 series are subject to replacement with whatever might be available, which can lead to difficulty in dating these curbside classics. Do NOT ask me how I know, but here’s a hint: I owned both a 1966 1800S and a 1973 1800ES.
The red ES pictured above could have been the twin of my car.
In 1989 or ’90 I met a guy in Baltimore who had two of these. One was a project, in original black w/red interior, that was rusty enough I’m not sure he’d absolutely decided to restore it. It was from this gracious, enthusiastic owner that I first heard that Jensen assembled the early ones. He said there was some production delay that caused the unpainted bodies to be parked outside for months, and that the sea air thereabouts gave the rust a meaningful head start. That was what afflicted his black one, though I understood his reluctance to scrap it. The style and color combination were fetching. By the way, I love the site!
Strangely enough, the person who told me that only cars made by Jensen were called P1800 seems to be right. Swedish made cars were just sold as 1800S, 1800E and 1800ES. They had no Ps.
An ex-girlfriend of mine is from a family that is in the Volvo business. When we started dating, her turbocharged Volvo had bricked its catalytic converter and she was daily-driving her 1966 1800S, It was very quaint.
I’ve only driven one 1800. I don’t remember what year, though it wasn’t an E. Dual SU’s for sure. What was memorable was the fact that it had a broken axle shaft and its on/off throttle torque steer made my later experience in a manual trans Chevy Citation X11 seem innocuous by comparison. Oh, and now I remember the dash mounted rear view mirror, which seemed to have two positions: see nothing, or get headlights aimed straight at my eyeballs. The short shifter was nice, as all my Volvo experience until then was with long shifter 544’s, 122’s and 140’s.
If I were going to buy a foreign curbside classic of my own, it would be one of these.
Finn McMissile!
(If you didn’t have younger kids about ten years ago, you may have to look it up)
I photographed but one of these, I believe it to belong to a former acquaintance from work, I managed to reel off just this one shot while I was passing through this area. This one was in nice shape when photographed, and somehow I came to the belief it was a 1972, but I can’t recall those details now.
Anachronistic sums up Volvo’s 1800 line very well. Just so many cues rolled up into one. Taking the original design to full bananas is one Mattias Vocks. His day job building cars at Koenigsegg clearly rubbed off on his beautiful and powerful modern iteration.
I loved the ads where Volvo claimed that it was the lowest priced European GT car or the highest priced economy car. The buyer’s choice. I think that these really are timeless, and I’ve never felt that the fins overpowered the design.
Your description finally made the styling of this Volvo make sense to me! It’s a Ferrari-Alfa bat 5! Now I know why I’ve always liked the look but not fully understood it!
I agree with 67Conti. It was beautiful when new and still is. Picking apart design features instead of looking at the vehicle as a whole is good for the pleasure of criticism. I do not feel that the P-1800 or is Kammback deserve that treatment. But, I have always admired the car. As for the information on Irv Gordon, THANKS. Had it not been submitted, I was going to look him up on line because I had read of his famous P-1800 more than two decades ago. Excellent essay on this car and thanks.
I drove a 1964 Volvo P1800S starting in 1966 when I was 15. My father had purchased it used in the Panhandle of TX in 1965. It was Pearl White like the Saint’s. I put Crager Mag wheels on it. Drove it till 1976 when my father bought me a 1970 BMW 2002 and parked the P1800S under my parents carport before leaving Dallas. Intended to restore it to pristine glory with my dad but alas he died in 1989 and that was not to be. . . In 1989 I attended my 20th HS reunion in Dallas from where I was then living in Santa Fe. I was remembered from HS by that fabulous car as much as by anything else. Still reeling from my dad’s death I sold it to one of my high school classmates who owned a body shop. Last I heard it was on the vintage sports car circuit in the Carolina’s. One distinctive sign of 1964 was an aluminum egg-crate grill that I’ve always found the most beautiful of the grill variants.
Interestingly before my father bought the 1964 P1800S in 1965 he’d owned a Karmann Ghia VW which I think was a 1958 or 59. It was a lot slower than the P1800 having to go downhill and downwind to hit 80mph as I recall. But my father did like the Ghia designs.