Volvo Sport
1956 Volvo P1900 Sport Cabriolet
Overview
ManufacturerVolvo Personvagnar
Also calledVolvo P1900
Production
  • 1956–1957
  • 68 produced
DesignerWilliam Tritt (body only)
Body and chassis
ClassSports car (S)
Body styleRoadster
LayoutFront-engine, rear-wheel drive
Powertrain
Engine1,414 cc (1.4 L) B14 I4
Transmission3-speed manual
Chronology
SuccessorVolvo P1800
Volvo P1900 driving adjacent to Volvo museum Gothenburg Sweden

The Volvo Sport (also known as P1900) is a Swedish fiberglass-bodied roadster of which sixty-eight units were built, first 19 by Glasspar Company in California, between 1956 and 1957 by Volvo Cars.

Assar Gabrielsson, Volvo's president and founder, got the idea for the car when he saw a Chevrolet Corvette in the United States and wanted to make something similar. He asked Bill Tritt of Glasspar, an American boatbuilder in Santa Ana, California, to design and tool a fibreglass/reinforced polyester body, which was later produced in Sweden. Glasspar was a pioneer in building fiberglass auto bodies from 1951 to 1957.

Erik Quistgaard was appointed as development team leader. The car was built on a tubular-steel chassis and used the Volvo PV444's 1414 cc engine producing 70 hp (52 kW). The engines (B14A and B16B ) were fitted with twin SU carburetors, driving through a three-speed manual gearbox. Many other parts were taken also from the Volvo PV444.

Demand was low, and the build quality was not up to Volvo standards.[1] Gunnar Engellau, who replaced Gabrielsson as president in 1956, took one for a drive on a holiday weekend and was dissatisfied enough that on returning to his office the following week cancelled the remaining production. "I thought it would fall apart!" is the legendary quote. The Volvo chassis design was far too flexible to accommodate a fiberglass body, and that Volvo resisted recommendations by Glasspar to alter the frame to address their concerns.

The total "Volvo Sport" production was sixty-eight cars, plus four or five prototypes. Forty-four were built in 1956, mostly for the Swedish market, and most still survive. The bulk of 1957's production went to the U.S. and elsewhere, and fewer of these are still in existence.

The development of the P1900 led to the tuning of the B-16 engine however, which was later put into the PV 444 series, making this car powerful enough to enter the US market.

References

  1. ↑ Hunt, David R. (n.d.). "The Volvosport P1900". volvoadventures.com. Retrieved February 24, 2010.
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