Yahoo Autos Driving The Volvo Museum Collection Is A Swedish Hot Rod Fantasy
I started out in a safety orange 1975 Volvo 242. This was a first-year, entry level model, with a 1.8-liter B20A engine carried over from the car’s slightly-less rectilinear predecessor, the 140. “It made under 100 hp,” said Hans Hedberg, the company’s heritage manager, and the madman responsible for my upcoming red herring buffet. This is not much to motivate nearly 3000-lbs of Swedish iron, even given its four-speed manual. But on my trip from my hotel in Gothenberg to the company’s test track an hour out of town, the brick pumpkin nonetheless delivered joy.
Some of this might have been a result of the car’s interior, which was done up in a period-correct riot of electric tangerine overlain by a layer of orange, gold, black, and brown vertical stripes that would not have looked out of place on a collared pullover in Ernie’s boyfriend Bert’s closet. “In 1975, you could buy a tie in that pattern at your Volvo dealer,” Hedberg told me, wistfully, like any good Gen X-er, recalling the permanent autumnal palette of our shared childhoods.
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First up was a trio of mid-90s 850 turbos. I began in a burgundy T-5 sedan, before moving on to a bright red T-5 R sedan. These were both manuals, making the R a personal unicorn, given that that spec was never available in the US. The more potent of this pair made nearly 250 hp, and the lesser model somewhere in the low 200s, a relative feast, and certainly enough to overpower their front wheels, which I did quite often (actually, always) despite the help Porsche had offered in the car’s tuning.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, the comparatively weaker car delivered more pleasure. It was less peaky, better balanced, and had superior damping, while feeling every bit as quick, if not more usably speedy. This did not surprise Hedberg. “I always advise people against buying the top spec of a vintage car,” he said. “Those cars were always used harder, and have more that can go wrong or wear out.” Instead, he recommended that shoppers, “buy an 850 Turbo you can drive all the time.”
The third leg of the åttahundrafemtio triangle was an American-spec T-5R station wagon, in a putrid hue that I call Necrotic Liver. Quick for a wagon, it was sadly equipped with an automatic transmission and hobbled alignment that caused it to dress to the right, regardless of how firmly I tried to command it. (The next day, we drove that beast an hour northeast to Trollhättan, to visit the Saab museum, but that’s another story.) Despite my affection for Volvo wagons, I didn’t fall for this veering buff slab.
Up next was a 2004 S60 R AWD in a very period correct teal over orange—Flash Green and Atacama, in Volvo-speak—complete with cobalt-tinted gauges and the marque’s unique 6-speed manual shifter, with the so-called “spaceball” rounded base, the wondrous leather-tipped knob of which looks like it has turgidly broken free of its codpiece, to the delight of size queens and superhero cos-players the world over.
This thing was a genuine speed demon in its day, capable of a 5.5-second sprint to 60 mph. It still felt plenty fast on the twisty Swedish country roads on which I viciously flogged it, helped along by an all-wheel-drive system which, despite a strong FWD bias, could be goosed into feeling like it had a more even F/R split with clever pedal dancing. Despite its one zillion dashboard buttons, blessed lack of any large distracting LCD screens, and lunatic color scheme, it felt surprisingly modern.
Extremely not-modern was an auric 1960s P1800 that I got into next, a delicate and razor-finned 2+2 that looked like Italian translated into Swedish, because it was (it was designed by a Swede who’d been indoctrinated by Pietro Frua.) I’ve always had something of an affection for these as a Nordic sports coupe outlier—like the kooky Saab Sonett. And while I was happy to finally get behind the wheel, and revel in its intricate daintiness, it didn’t really do much for me.
