Design is always all about compromise. When designing cars, there are some criteria that has to be met through a cost/benefit perspective. Very few designs are really uncompromised, and those that are, are seldom very practical. In a few happy instances the equation can give a satisfactory result. Sometimes, some things simply has to give. The question for the car designer will always be: What will have to go?
Jan Wilsgaard started designing cars for Volvo practically fresh out of his teens, he became head of design in his mid-twenties. He held that position for forty years, starting with the Volvo 120-series “Amazon”, and ending up in the early 90’s with the Volvo 850. And with almost all the other Volvos made in between. When someone holds a position for that long, one can follow their ups and downs, their trial and errors, one can see their evolvement over time. Most of all, one can see different themes explored, certain aspects and idiosyncrasies, their private pet-peeves.
The 1956 Volvo “Amazon” is a very beautiful design, especially in four-door and two-tone guise. It looks a little like an American car, designed by an Italian. Perhaps what Detroit would and should have come up with, had they put their hearts and minds into compacts in the fifties.
Six years later, Wilsgaard had to redesign the car as a station-wagon. As said in my earlier piece, that was a very heavy and expensive redesign. The quarter panel is straightened out, on the sedan it makes a quite significant downwards slope to the rear. The rear light bezels are lifted up in accordance, so there’s a straight line from front to rear fender. The rear tail gate goes deeper into the body, on the sedan the trunk is higher up and has a more rounded shape. And not to forget, the rear doors are completely different.
When Wilsgaard designed the 140-series, he made the sedan and station-wagon simultaneously. And to be practical, he made the doors interchangeable. And here rises the dilemma. A station-wagon is most practical in a boxy shape, while a sedan has a “notch” in its shape. The transition between greenhouse and deck lid is a tricky one, and works best in a continuous flowing line. That’s why most sedans of today aren’t notchbacks as one could think, but fastbacks.
To make the lines flow, Wilsgaard made a small but not insignificant slope to the rear of the roof section on the sedan. The slope is so subtle one doesn’t even notice it, but the car would look awkward without it. The windows and doors followed accordingly, and as the doors were the same on the station-wagon, they too had that little inclination, in spite of the fact that the roof of the wagon continued in a straight line. It’s a compromise, a simple sacrifice in favor of the sedan. The result isn’t any less obvious due to the fact that the doors were trimmed in chrome, in contrast to the bare metal body.
Another pet-peeve of his is a line of thought I will henceforth call “the bow”. It’s a slightly banana shaped bow from front to rear, making the car look like a muscle in contraction just waiting to flex. It makes the car have a slightly muscular or even vigoruous stance. It’s most visible on the earliest 140’s, it became more obscure as the car evolved into the 240. Speaking of which, here are the doors as they looked in the 70’s.
Volvo has essentially been a one-line car maker for most of its life. When newer lines have been developed, the older ones have been produced in parallel. In the 80’s the issue with the 240-doors became a little less obvious because of the fad with blacked out window trim. But it’s still there. And it’s still visible.
The advantage of conservative design is that it usually stands above mere fads. What was seen as old-fashioned already in its time becomes timeless as time goes by. I guess the Volvo design language has such good bones they can be clad in any guise and just look contemporary.
For the 700-series Wilsgaard reversed the priorities. This time around he made the doors in favor of the station-wagon, thus making a compromise in the other end instead. On the wagon the lines work perfectly, with a very harmonious result. Not so much on the sedan, with perhaps the biggest notch in notchback history. Though it is a rectilinear heaven of sorts, the car actually has the trademarked Wilsgaard bow.
With the 940, the lines are eased up a bit. But there’s a slight discrepancy between the rounded shapes of the rear, and the sharp lines of the doors. It’s still a compromise.
I consider the 850 being Jan Wilsgaards least compromised and most harmonious design. Here, the doors work well both on the sedan and on the wagon, and the lack of quarter lights makes for very clean lines. Though, the quarter panels on the sedan looks a little vague, there could have been a better execution of those lines. The bow is most visible on the wagon, the roof doesn’t so much slope but looks like it’s slightly canted, making the lines from the fender and the roof converge in the distant horizon. As compromises go, this is one the best executions there is, it is the end result of forty years of juggling with different design parameters.
With the debut of the S80 in 1999 Volvo had gone the full circle. In the modern age of today, the door dilemma has become a non-issue. Different cars based on the same platform can be made on the same factory line, seemingly haphazard. With a slight variation of the P2-platform, Volvo could make three virtually different cars, the S60, V70, and S80. And with those came three different kind of doors. It’s still a cost and benefit situation, but with the technology of today, the cost of making variations is irrelevant to the benefit of having those variations in the first place. The dilemma is no more.
great article. i always found the rear door on the 140 & 240 to be an amusingly practical swedish touch. i now know why i’ve always had a soft spot for volvos. they were were mostly designed by the same guy. it’s funny that his later cars were referred to as bricks when his earlier models had such great curves. let’s not forget the p1800.
not sure that i get what you mean by the bow. is it the subtle arch to the bodies, like a cat getting ready to pounce?
” is it the subtle arch to the bodies, like a cat getting ready to pounce?”
Something like that. I should’ve elaborated further, but I didn’t have the time. What I mean is, the “wholeness” of the body, including the greenhouse, looks slightly constrained, like a muscle waiting to flex, or like an animal in a cage too small, or for that matter, a cat getting ready to pounce. It’s a play with seemingly straight lines that actually aren’t straight. Like Parthenon in Athens, with a forced perspective that looks like it’s straight but actually isn’t. Another analogy is the contraposto pose, as seen in Michelangelos statue of David.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposto
Few things are as straight as they seem; and that can be applied to more than just car lines.
+1
Here’s how to do rear doors on a real station wagon …
+1
I had never noticed the doors on the 240 wagon, but now that you’ve pointed it out, I can’t not see the curve.
Also, I love the big Peugeot wagons–saw both a 504 and a 505 in the same day recently, after not seeing either for years.
I never noticed them either. My dad had a 144 sedan that I spent plenty of time driving but I don’t remember seeing any 140 wagons. My brother had a 240 wagon but somehow I never noticed that odd little detail.
A better shot dramatizing the differences in the rear doors between the 504 sedan and the 504 wagon …
Agreed, Unlike Volvo, Peugeot never made the doors of its wagons to be interchangeable with the sedans, certainly longer on the 504 wagons, to good effect. The French never seemed to focus on practicality.
And off topic, whats with the rubber bumper on the pre 74 sedan?
Let’s keep in mind that Peugeot used a completely different longer wheelbase “platform” for all their wagons, unlike almost everyone else. I’ve got a Peugeot wagon article that just needs to be written; and soon!
Well I’ll come clean and admit that my posting the Peugeot wagon pictures, while somewhat relevant, also constituted none-too-subtle lobbying to Paul with regard to his (previously) promised Peugeot wagon article. I’ll also admit to my belief that for me, the 504 wagon is one of the most beautiful wagons (and cars of any kind) I know, rivaled only perhaps by the Citroen CX Estate, which could however be said to be trying a little too hard by comparison …
The car in the picture was purchased by my mom at my suggestion in 1981 — the very last U.S. year for this model — when Peugeot had replaced the 504 in the U.S. with the 505, but didn’t yet have a 505 wagon. It was only offered with a diesel engine at that point and I still have the booklet somewhere, which merely proclaimed it the “Peugeot Diesel Wagon.”
The sedan shown belonged to a friend (who still has it, I believe; alas, our 504 had to be sold in 2007 after my mom suffered a stroke and could no longer drive) and is, I believe, a 1974. The rubber bumpers are original, Peugeot already having replaced the original nice-looking chrome items with them by that model year.
It just went to the top (actually, second from the top) of the to-do list.
Look at any 4-door Rambler Cross Country, Classic or Ambassador from about 1955 through 1962. The sedans and wagons used the same rear doors, but the roof of the wagon sloped back with the doors and then flattened out. I always thought it was an attractive design. It never occurred to me that there might be a practical reason behind it.
Both AMC and Volvo were small companies that had to be creative out of necessity. They were stuck with what they had, and simply had to make something out of a seemingly nothing.
Rambler introduced that feature in 1955 and it continued in more conservative form through ’65. On the early models, if I recall correctly, the sedan and wagon actually shared a roof stamping – the wagon roofline was literally grafted on to the back, hence the dip.
AMC was a master at this. The ’63 cars shared side window frames front and rear, and the ’64 American shared doors and other major components with the Classic. The Hornet coupe and sedan had the same roof stamping. And the AMX and Gremlin cost almost nothing to tool for. But every time AMC deviated from this tactic, it cost them dearly.
And speaking about compromise gone totally in favor of engineering costs over design, how about the Pontiac Aztek?
Wilsgaard should have been hired as a consultant to prevent that mess.
Ingvar, thanks for this article. I have always loved Volvo cars, as my parents had them when I was growing up. Their first one was a bright red 1973 1800ES with black interior. They got it in 1974 when it was nearly new. They had until 1986, when they traded it in on a 1986 cream yellow 240DL wagon with GL turbine aluminum wheels. My mom currently has a black sapphire XC90 with the burnt orange interior. Interestingly, I see a lot of the 1800ES in my current V50, like the shape of the hood and the rear quarter window, while the ‘shoulders’ in the fender line remind me of the 240s!
Do you have any of the Stahlberg promotional Volvo model cars? They were sold through the parts department of the Volvo dealers. A friend of my father’s owned the Volvo dealer in Rock Island, so I had quite a few as a kid, but unfortunately most of them got broken or thrown out. Two or three I still have. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a number of Stahlberg models, one by one, to replace the lost ones, thanks to ebay. I think the oldest one I have is a circa 1968 142. Very detailed for their time.
I’ve been a fan of these cars for a long time, and the rear door angle does detract, but they’re such great cars anyway. The Amazon, of course, is truly classic. The 700, too me, has always been interesting. It is so square that it should be considered the box the K-car came in, but he pulled the design off with such finesse that it actually is, to my eyes, a classic design and extremely well done. If you’re going to make a box, that’s the way to do it.
Fantastic article. I’d never noticed the 140/240 wagons’ odd rear door treatment before despite my brother having a 240 wagon for a number of years.
The Amazon really was like a 3/4 scale ’55 Chevy. My dad and I had 3 of them in various states of viability at one point when I was in high school. They were so unlike anything else from that era in their practical sensibility – just well packaged, solid little cars. I only knew them as old cars but they must’ve really been something else when they were rolling off dealer lots new in the 60′s.
The boxy lines of the next few generations of Volvos was quite a departure from the Amazon but the purity (rear door detail notwithstanding) and tastefulness of the designs were not. Great to see them lined up like this so you can see the evolution. The 850 is about as elegant as a rectangle can get – a masterpiece. The styling of later models have grown on me and I can appreciate them now, but the 140-850 models will always be real Volvos in my heart.
Damn. Now I really want to find a 740/760 to clean up and use as an occasional self-driven limousine for when I want something with four doors to ferry around more than one adult passenger in my car. Probably V8 conversion – I’ve had both a NA and turbo’d 2.3L and as much as I loved them, I know I’d enjoy it more with a V8. A 3.0L DOHC I6 out of a 960 would be really sweet though and would keep it in the family. I wish I had time, space and money to indulge all my automotive fantasies.
I’ll second that. I’ve always lusted after the 740/760 Turbo, particularly the wagons. They were such understated, dignified cars. And great sleepers with the turbocharged, intercooled four. The 850 was great too, probably Volvo’s pinnacle, but I’d rather stick to the simpler, RWD cars.
It’s a shame that Volvo’s lost the plot so badly in the past decade or so. The brand was popular because it sold safe, sturdy, timeless-looking cars. The styling never changed, but that was okay because the cars lasted longer than anything else on the road. Now Volvo’s just another me-too Eurotrash brand with flavor-of-the-month styling and doesn’t do anything particularly well. Too bad.
Yes, a great article indeed. I’ve been aware of the 145′s rear door, and what Volvo did there, but I never thought through completely the problem with the 740. I almost bought a 740 turbo sedan, but couldn’t stand the very crude resolution of the rear roof/doors. It was to be my “executive company car” and I thought the wagon was superb looking, but I was too uptight to buy a wagon then for that role. Stupid! But the W124 was better anyway!
My dad had a 1988 740 Turbo sedan as a company car. Bright red with tan interior. It might have been boxy but it was sharp! Also the first car we had with an airbag.
That was a truly fascinating, highly educational article. Loved the muscle about to flex image and I, for one got it. Thanks for your unique and highly articulate perspective!
A really fun article. I is really nice how CC is going, with lots of guys contributing. Very nice tone about the place. I wonder if a CC alumni meeting is in order?
The Volvo Amazon wasn’t so much an American car designed by an Italian as it was an American car styled by Phil Wright and introduced in 1952 as the Willys Aero Eagle. The size was about the same too, although Willys used larger displacement engines.
You hit it. I knew that the Volvo reminded me of something american from the early 50s, but it wasn’t coming to me.
CJ, get an avatar here and on TTAC!
Bring on the PUG story I knew the doors on Ovlovs interchange Ive changed them over repairing a friends misadventure but this has been a facinating insight into the designers point of view.
Fantastic article. I had never known that Volvo’s styling was the result of one guy over all those years. Like many of you, I had never noticed the odd door treatment on the 240 wagons. Your discussion of the design compromises between sedans and wagons was interesting. I am reminded of the Chrysler hardtop wagons of the early 60s as a unique way of styling both to use the same doors. Also, I looked and saw that even little Studebaker used different wagon doors up until the end to avoid these compromises, even when the company could not really afford it.
The major reason why the rear doors on the Volvo wagon weren’t made differently was money – the greenhouse is the most expensive thing on a carbody to re-design or alter. By keeping the doors the same means no additional sets of glass, frames, gaskets, channels, etc.
Volvo wasn’t the only carmaker to do this, however. Look at the Camry wagons of the early 90′s – clearly a tacked-on box with an odd-shaped reverse-slant Gremlin-esque rear side glass. The Saturn wagons were even more obvious. Ditto for the Buick Roadmaster, even though the sedan’s rear doors had a divider bar that allowed a panel of glass to roll down all the way, as opposed to the Caprice’s 1/3 way down full glass rear door, the doors were different in shape as well, and the Caprice wagon was re-badged and trimmed in the Buick version to save those big bucks.
As a designer, it drives me crazy, however!
Final point: All cars have a slight “bow” to them. It’s an optical thing – if the lines were dead-straight, the car would appear to “sag”. Having that slight bow gives the car a visually-correct appearance. My old 1964 Chevy avatar above was a linear design that appeared straight as an arrow, but if you sighted along the lines, it did bow ever so slightly to give it the proper appearance.
Memories! That baby blue Amazon station wagon looks exactly like the first car I got to drive …sitting on my father’s lap at age 2 or 3 in the mid-70s.
Our Volvo was quite a remarkable car and some 30 years ahead of the sports wagon trend that took hold in the mid 90s (at least on this side of the Atlantic) with the Audi RS2 and BMW M5 wagons.
My father bought it new in 1965 and had it tricked out by the dealer with the high output B18 engine from the 123 GT and a limited-slip diff. It even had a leather-wrapped three-spoke steering wheel with a checkered flag in the middle. Sadly, that steering wheel is the only surviving part of the car, gathering dust in the attic.
In 1978, my mom lightly bumped into the car parked in front of her and the whole fender came off, revealing the extent of the Volvo’s rust issues. I remember shedding a tear as the mechanic drove it away with the torn-off fender latched to the roof rack.
Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wait long for consolation. A few weeks later, my dad purchased a lightly used 164E with plenty of goodies for a little boy to brag about: leather seats, a sunroof, air conditioning and most importantly, a speedometer topping out at 200 km/h…
Geez, I’m a little embarrassed that I never noticed that rear door! I’ve veen a Prancing Moose fan since High School, have owned a few sedans and known several wagons but that fairly obvious kink never caught my eye!
I remember noticing the rear door, and figuring it was shaped that way so it could be used on sedans and wagons. I probably read about AMC doing their thing along those lines so had the idea in my head somewhere.
The only Volvo I’ve ever driven was a white on tan wagon – 1968 or so, I suppose – that was a loaner. It had an automatic transmission and I thought it was a stone. It was nice enough inside but not as nice as the Rover 2000 that was in the shop. On those occasions when the Rover was working well it could take a Volvo with ease. It’s probably because of that automatic wagon that I never developed an interest in Volvos.
We had two (mostly) running 122′s at one point, one 4 speed and one auto. The 3 speed auto was definitely a dog – those 4-bangers can’t afford to lose oomph much to a torque converter. The 4 speed wasn’t exactly fast but it felt much more lively with the stick shift and was much more fun to drive.
The much later slush boxes in our 760 turbo and 960 were awesome – super responsive, almost read your mind when it came to kick-downs.
Just about had got over how the rear doors on the 140 wagons had driven me crazy for over 30 odd years now and you just HAD to bring it up again…
Volvos that look like Volvos.
Volvo will likely gain market share if it simply reintroduces the 240 sedan and wagon in the exact same shape with modern mechanicals.
The 240 still looks more “premium” than current Volvos, with excellent implmentation of the 5mph bumpers.
Volvos that look like Volvos.
Volvo will likely gain market share if it simply reintroduces the 240 sedan and wagon in the exact same shape with modern mechanicals.
The 240 still looks more “premium” than current Volvos, with excellent implmentation of the 5 mph bumpers.
The 140/240 wagon makes me wonder why the rear quarter windows weren’t designed with an upward slope to their leading edge mirroring the downward one on the doors. Which would form a “V” shape…