Red Volvo Week #2

Two beautiful pictures from a rare and very dirty Volvo Sport, also known as the P1900. Apparently this car number #33 from 68 sold cars. Today, it is still running although in a light blue color.

Promotion picture from Volvo had a very American atmosphere…

1956 - Volvo Sport (P1900)

The Volvo Sport (also known as P1900) is a fiberglass-bodied roadster of which sixty-eight (68) units were built between 1956 and 1957 by Volvo Cars. Assar Gabrielsson, Volvo’s president and founder, got the idea for the car when he saw a Chevrolet Corvette in the United States and wanted to make something similar. He asked Glasspar, an American boatbuilder in Santa Ana, California, to built a fiberglass / reinforced polyester body, which was later produced in Sweden.
The car was built on a tubular-steel chassis and used the Volvo PV444’s 1,414 cubic centimetre engine producing 70 hp. The engines (B14A and B16B) were fitted with twin SU carburetors, driving through a three-speed manual gearbox. Many other parts were taken also from the Volvo PV444.
Demand was low, and the build quality was not up to Volvo standards. Gunnar Engellau, who replaced Gabrielsson as president in 1956, took one for a drive on a holiday weekend and was dissatisfied enough that on returning to his office the following week cancelled the remaining production. “I thought it would fall apart!” is the legendary quote.
The total “Volvo Sport” production was sixty-eight cars, plus four or five prototypes. Forty-four were built in 1956, mostly for the Swedish market, and most still survive. The bulk of 1957’s production went to the U.S. and elsewhere, and fewer of these are still in existence.