There can be but one place to start a preview of the Winter Wagons display at the Scramble in January: Gothenburg, Sweden.
Wintery, certainly, and the spiritual home of the wagon.
Let’s not be mistaken: the estate car wasn’t invented by Volvo. Far from it. Shooting brakes and the concept of a load lugger are even older than the automobile, but Volvo has become synonymous with it since the 1920s. The PV4, the second Volvo, could be converted to a bed.
One of the most familiar early Volvo wagons had an American hue; picture a 1950s American station wagon and you’re halfway there to the Duett. Curiously, it was only developed after the popularity of coachbuilt van versions of the PV445.
From there Volvo never looked back. The ‘Amazon’ 120 Series makes for a handsome estate but Volvo swapped a sweeping 1960s for a boxy and angular 1970s.
And again, never looked back. Old Volvos never die, said the ads, and nor apparently did the designs. Launching in the early 1970s, the 200 Series soldiered on moving house after house and carrying ladder after ladder for two decades, with the only real changes taking place beneath the bonnet.
Therefore if no estates celebration could start anywhere other than Gothenburg, no estates celebration would be complete without a 240. What better than the top spec, fastest and so-called Flying Brick? Volvo UK has one preserved in its heritage fleet and will kindly be displaying a GLT at the Scramble.
When the 240 finally was retired in 1994, Volvo was rather distracted by the exploits of another of its performance estates. Though this rather embarrasses the 240 on paper. This is, of course, the 850.
An assault on the British Touring Car Championship with Tom Walkinshaw Racing put Volvo back on the grid for the first time since its Group A 240s were blown away by Ford’s Sierra. The headlines swarmed with this unlikely thoroughbred and its Le Mans winning driver, Jan Lammers, and it soon became a cult icon, still remembered fondly 30 years later.
The average driver could get a taste of the 240bhp turbocharged five-cylinder with the limited-run T-5R, with wide arches, rear wing and sub-seven-seconds 0-60 mph time. Again, Volvo has saved an 850 T-5R for posterity, and it too will represent the marque at the Scramble.
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