Volvo P1800

Reading time: about 1 minute.

The Volvo P1800 is one of those classic cars that very nearly never existed, Volvo had contracted Karmann to build the beautiful coupé however before full production began Karmann received an ultimatum from VW clearly stating that if they built the P1800 for Volvo, VW would cancel all contracts with them. This left Karmann with no choice but to abandon the P1800, which in turn left the future of the P1800 on very thin ice.

Somewhat by accident in 1958 a Volvo brochure was released that included pictures of the P1800 prototype, the world hadn’t seen the car up until this point and the staggering amount of interest it generated forced Volvo to both admit it’s existence and find a way to get it built.

British automaker Jensen was contracted to build the car and production began in Scotland with final assembly taking place in Bromwich, England. The P1800 went on to feature in the TV series “The Saint” featuring Roger Moore, Moore fell in love with the sporty little Volvo and bought one for himself after the first seasons filming was wrapped up.

Ben Branch

Ben has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.

Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Published by Ben Branch - April 26th 2012

Related Posts

When it was introduced in 1935 the Lincoln-Zephyr V12 had its work cut out for it, it was a high-end luxury car being offered for sale in the middle of the Great Depression –…

Although just 25 examples of the Jaguar XKSS were built it took the company over 60 years to complete them all, because of a tragic factory fire followed by a 58 year pause in the…

This is the Little Legends Spyder, it’s a drivable 1:2 scale model of the Ferrari 250 GT California – considered by many to be one of the most beautiful cars ever made. Despite its size…

Despite its unusual boxy looks the little Ligier JS4 proved an unlikely best seller in France in the early 1980s. This popularity came down to a few factors – the JS4 was built by Ligier which also ran the French Formula One team Equipe Ligier, it was possible to own and drive a JS4 without a driver’s license, and the vehicle was quite inexpensive to buy and operate.

The Jaguar D-Type is perhaps most notable for the fact that it was a car designed using some cutting edge aircraft technology (in the 1950s) that would defeat all who came before it at…

The Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser has become one of the most desirable classic four-wheel drives in the world in recent years, alongside its American and British cousins like the International Scout, the (first) Ford…