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On August 20th, I had the opportunity to attend the 50th Anniversary Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance car show. With Carmel Bay as the background, approximately two hundred twenty-two stunningly restored automobiles were displayed on the eighteenth fairway.
As for Volvo automobiles, I found none entered in this year's event; however, on my way over to the Blackhawk display to view several Chrysler concept vehicles, I unexpectedly encountered Irv Gordon and Sören Johansson (Volvo, Corporate Communications) amongst a trio of Volvo
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automobiles. Parked adjacent to the forthcoming Volvo S60 T6 (equipped with a manual transmission!) and a C70 coupe was Irv's famous 1.8 million mile '66 Volvo 1800-S.
A last minute change by Volvo cancelled Irv’s original plan to attend
the VSA East Coast Meet this same weekend in Annapolis, Maryland. With a personal desire for Volvo to create a retro-style automobile (e.g., Cobra/Viper, 550/Boxster, Beetle, etc.), I gave Sören my idea of creating a modern interpretation of the '72-'73 ES sport wagon (a.k.a., the Swedish Nomad). Sören appeared unmoved by this idea, but he did throw me this bone in response: Expect Volvo to premier a new and interesting product at the 2001 Detroit and Los Angeles auto shows. Could this be his way of saying that such an idea has already been thought of and is in the pipeline?
As a side note - at the Blackhawk display, I saw this 1953 Fiat 8V coupe by Ghia, which bears a strong resemblance to the Volvo P1800. In fact, three design proposals - and the subsequent construction of the ’57 P1800 prototype based upon Pelle Petterson’s winning design - were developed by Frua, a subsidiary of Ghia. |
