It’s been a while since we introduced a shooting brake, in the truest sense. And it’s been a while since we introduced a Volvo.
The 240 GLT and 850 T5-R are already on their way, proper, undeniable haulers as they are, but this is a car that revived a 1960s theme for Volvo and, for British buyers at least, evoked the Reliant Scimitar.
As much a little GT as it is an estate car, this is the 480.
While it looked like a modern incarnation of the P1800ES, the car The Saint would use to move house, and even launched with an ES suffix to its name, the 480 was the first-ever front-wheel-drive Volvo. Less surprisingly, it is the first and (so far…) only Volvo with pop-up headlights.
That feature will mean it’s also no surprise that the 480 was introduced in the 1980s.
Bertone and Ghia had both been tasked by Jan Wilsgaard with a design proposal, the latter having been where Volvo design head Wilsgaard had earned his stripes, but Rob Koch’s Dutch Volvo design outpost won out. Angular, yet still somehow modern looking, it remains a striking design.
The glass hatch of the ES was revived, and like the forefather 1800, the 480 wasn't built in Sweden but in its ‘native’ Netherlands. A convertible was threatened but never materialised, perhaps for the best, and as a coupé/liftback/shooting brake it only sold in modest numbers.
Yet you’ll find one on the Winter Wagons lawn at the Scramble on Sunday 8 January, representing an intriguing chapter in the good book of the estate car.
Tickets have sold out but you can still join the waitlist for tickets to the Scramble. Join here.
