10 Facts About the Amazing Volvo Amazon
1. Around eight per cent of the approximately 297,000 Amazons sold in Sweden are still around! The most common edition is the model from 1966, of which there are still 4,804 registered cars. In total, there are 24,282 Volvo Amazons registered in Sweden.
2. Volvo’s factory driver, Carl-Magnus Skogh, won the 1965 Acropolis Rally in Greece driving a 122S.
3. The Swedish police cooperated with Volvo, and they jointly developed equipment that was later included on ordinary production cars. The police cars featured disc brakes, brake assist and radial tyres several years before they became common in production cars. The police Amazons were equipped with rear window fans and there was a button by the steering wheel connecting the windscreen cleaner with the fastest windscreen wiper setting.
4. Colin Powell, the USA’s former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a big fan of cars. He has owned several classic Volvos, including a 1966 Amazon estate. When he left his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, he was given an Amazon in dire need of renovation by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
5. The 1963 Geneva catalogue featured the Volvo 122S Cabriolet – its creator was listed as Jacques Coune, the Belgian coach builder. It was a beautiful conversion, featuring doors without window frames, door openings that were gently rounded at the back and rear lights that were angled forward. The catalogue gave the impression that it was a production car, but Volvo had nothing to do with the initiative and only four were built.
6. Advertising man Amil Gargano of New York took on the Volvo account in 1962. He concluded that Volvos could withstand practically anything, and this became the brand’s USP. An advertising film shows an Amazon being driven hard on gravel roads. The advert’s payoff is just as clear as it is impossible today: “And you can drive it like you hate it. Cheaper than psychiatry”.
7. There were plans to put a V8 in an Amazon – an evolved version of a truck engine. Five prototypes were said to have been built, but in the end Volvo’s management realised that a V8 was not suitable for the Amazon, not least given there was no six-cylinder version and the leap from a four to a V8 would have been too great.
8. The Amazons built in Volvo’s assembly plant in Halifax, Canada were marketed under the name Volvo Canadian.
9. When Volvo’s range of models expanded thanks to the Amazon, Volvo regained its position as Sweden’s best selling brand of car in 1958. This is a position it had retained every year since then.
10. In “All The President’s Men”, the movie about the Watergate affair that forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, drives a white Amazon.
About the Author
Subhash Nair Written work on dsf.my. @subhashtag on instagram. Autophiles Malaysia on Youtube.
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