(first posted 5/28/2014. Turns out this was an option on 140 and 160 series Volvos up until 1972, but very rarely seen. And it required the column mounted shifter for the four speed manual. Both options were not offered in the US. The model was also an option, but she sold out very quickly)
This picture jolted me when I stumbled on it, and not just because of the occupant of this 144 sedan. I’d never seen or heard of a bench seat in a 144. Certainly it wasn’t available in the US, and I’m 99% certain not in other export markets like Germany. So I’m guessing it was strictly a home-market option. Somewhat oddly, there’s no evidence of a middle seat belt. And presumably, this is an automatic, because if someone tells me that Volvo also offered a column shift for their manual transmission, I’m really going to be flustered.
I knew I should have gone to Sweden in 1976 when I had the opportunity….
The girl behind the wheel doesn’t look old enough to drive. Today she could well be a grandmother.
She looks old enough to do ANYTHING. My goodness! And rest in peace, Maya Angelou.
The kind of Swedish sure-grip machine that Lt. Frank Drebin could only dream of.
All of a sudden, it hits me: The Volvo 240 was a better built 64 Studebaker, only a touch smaller and way less powerful!
@JPC – I think the factory turbo 240s were around 150-160HP in their better years. That’d at least give a (regular) V8 Lark a run for its money. It’s too bad there wasn’t a real 240 equivalent of a Studebaker R2/R4 car!
Yes, a Volvo 240 that could do this, well that is a Volvo I could get behind! 🙂
Here’s an old Volvo farm tractor that can do that:
Kiwi Robbie Franecevic raced a Volvo in Australian touring car racing a turbo 740 from memory it handled like an apartment block but since he learnt his trade in the family Humber80(hillman Minx) it probably wasnt all that bad. Those will fry tyres.
It was a 240 turbo, and actually won the 1986 championship (ahead of a Nissan and BMW incidentally, you had to look to 4th place to find Peter Brock in a Holden)
Yes 240 turbo he partnered with John Bowe. too late to edit by the time I looked it up sorry.
It’s very easy to increase the boost in Volvos; 300-350 hp is a pretty safe level.
jp, that reminds me of the Car and Driver road test of a Mercedes sedan in the mid-1960’s in which the author wrote that the car reminded him of an attempt to build the perfect 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air.
Love it!
There is nothing I don’t like about that picture.
When are y’all going to start showing real cars again?
Not a fan of Swedish girls? 🙂
I have nothing against girls of any nationality. In fact i married an Aussie girl. I don’t like Swedish cars, specially Volvos.
Rumor has it Paul and Perry are doing Naturally Aspirated Subaru Week sometime next month. 😀
So only girls with hairy legs?
I would definitely want a bench seat with a Swedish girl like her in the car!
+1
It is presumably an automatic in this picture, but it would equally well with Volvo’s traditional long shift lever. And judging by the steering wheel and dash, I think this is an early 140 that would have had that shifter if it were a manual. By the way, I thought I knew ’60’s and early ’70’s Volvos, but I never heard of this. And if I’d seen that picture when I was 14 I would not have forgotten.
I have no idea what this is. I have never heard of a bench seat in a Volvo, and I have never, ever, seen one in real life.
It looks like denim, but it could be corduroy. Considering the texture and color of the upholstery, the bench seat could very well be from some aftermarket catalogue.
For some reason I feel that the ’69 142 I owned for about a week had similar fabric, although maroon, not blue. I don’t think all 140’s were vinyl. But that was almost 40 years ago and I did not like that car. Gave it back to the seller, a friend who had bought my 122S a few years earlier, before I registered it. An Alfa Romeo was singing a siren song, and I bought it, but now I find 142’s very appealing, and could care less about ’70’s Alfas. Ahh, youth …
I remember this upholstery well, from the earlier years of the 140. Very nubby and tough feeling stuff. Actually, I have a chair from Ikea with very similar material. It was a common upholstery at the time, for interior furniture.
This is different. I’ve never seen a Volvo with bench seat up front, they all had front bucket seats.
The picture is taken with a widangle lens. Is it possoble that this gives an illusion of a bech seat ? I have never heard of any Volvo with bench seats.
Thanks for ar wonderful website !
No. The section of seat in the middle is clearly there. No optical tricks here.
I’ve checked on some Volvo forums, and this seems to be one of the holy grails. It does exist, but it was extremely rare. So rare that only a handful seems to exist today. But Volvo only had automatics with column shifter up until 1972, when the lever was moved to the transmission tunnel. And the bench seat could be ordered as an option with any automatic car up until then. Most went to 164’s, but there are 144’s/145’s with the bench seat/auto combo. Though, as said, I have never ever seen one.
Thanks. That confirms what I assumed.
I believe this car has a four-speed manual transmission. Open this link and scroll down to “Steering column-mounted gear lever ” and you’ll see the evidence in this 1970 140 owners’ manual.
http://new.volvocars.com/ownersdocs/1970/1970_140/70140_01.htm
Excellent. That’s a new one to me. I rather thought that the pictured car had to have one, as automatics were still quite uncommon in Europe at the time.
The link also indicates the hand brake is adjacent to the driver’s door, so what is the lever rising from the floor next to the young lady’s calf?
I think it’s the manually adjusted seat, or bench in this case, that on the floor.
I looked at it again and I think what looked like a rod is actually part of her left shoe. The seat adjustment makes sense, I just thought it was a lever originating well ahead of the seat.
“so what is the lever rising from the floor next to the young lady’s calf?”
….. Dude bro if you had to ask that…. ‘cos I would definitely have a lever rising up in that car LOL. Wonder where she is now, if I’m 51 she’s probably every bit of 60, wonder if she’s still hot???
Seriously though I grew up in Volvos and just sold two of them this week, a 240 and a 940. I’m a BMW/SAAB/VW guy now but I’ve owned the brick myself on occasion.
This makes me want to go to Sweden so bad!!!
When I started reading american car blogs several years ago I was perplexed with so called bucket seats. It took me a while to understand that’s how you call plain old front car seats. It’s just that in Europe we got so few cars with front bench seats I never really knew a car can have anything else. Maybe the prevalence of manual transmissions is the reason for this or maybe because our cars were always so much narrower…
May it be that front bench seats were only the norm in North America?
Bench seats were the norm on traditional large cars until fairly recently. If you look specifically at large rear wheel drive body on frame cars, GM offered mainly benches until 1996 and Ford until 2011! The seats were basically three across couches. On most “standard” large cars, the center seat was big enough to carry a normal adult on cross town trips without too much trouble, but it was not a luxurious experience.
There were certainly a lot of significant exceptions, but the move of most typical American cars to front wheel drive tended to make at least the option of bucket (individual) seats, usually with a console and floor shifter much more common.
By the late ’60s the basic bench got fancier on more expensive cars. Options tended to be split either in the center, or what was known as a 40/60 split with the passenger side getting 60% of the seat and having a wide center fold down armrest.
Chrysler was a leader with 50/50 split seats with dual armrests by the late 60’s. GM got heavy into the 60/40 by about 1975. Ford followed the Chrysler design by about 1974. There are lots of exceptions and top end luxury cars had more options.
The bench in the Volvo seems useless. Too narrow to really take even a small person in any comfort. But, I’d happily give the center spot a try with the driver pictured!
I never under stood the 40/60 split with the 60 on the passenger side. I suppose it was to accommodate 2 passengers and allow the driver to have his seat adjusted any way he wants, but seems like for most times, having the center armrest attached to the passenger side was not ideal for driver comfort.
I had two GM cars with the 40/60. I always drove them with the armrest down. Unless the two seats were positioned radically apart, it was comfortable. The wide single rest meant no elbows in the crack between rests, or trying to balance an elbow on one skinny rest.
The seat always looked tidier to me than the split armrest in Fords and Chryslers, where, unless the seats were perfectly aligned and the armrests were in the same position, the front seat looked like a rumpled living room that had been populated by my kids.
In theory, the 40/60 probably made for a slightly better middle seat experience, but that likely came into play for me only once or twice.
I wonder if those seats were available in Aussie even the small ADO16 from BMC came with a bench seat standard there.
Volvo seemed to always understand good seats are important in cars. Most car makers still do not understand that.
Seats? What seats?!!
You’re right about Volvo’s seats. Even the bench version provides for lower lumbar support. A typical American bench seat of that era could be described as a park bench, a park bench with pillows, or a park bench with leather-covered pillows.
Wow, just wow. That is certainly an attractive Volvo! The interior, I mean. I’m bringing up again how most interiors are black or gray, with the occasional tan, beige or white. I really am talking about the car, but I’ll acknowledge the driver is quite attractive, too. While I tend to prefer bucket seats, if she likes the bench seat then I am totally OK with it.
Thanks for the picture. I love bench seats, and am always intrigued by the oddities and rarities in foreign cars.
Her eyes are telling me to get in and show her how to get it moving…
Oh my. Now this is what my bucket list should look like.
Oh my. This should be on my bucket list, but it’s not, because it’s a bench seat!
I wonder whether any of these seats have figured in any Swedish films? “Three Swedes and a Bad Deed”, anyone? That sounds more like a Spaghetti Western. Maybe a Smorgasbord Western?
Very nice. And she’s wearing her seat belt!
Here’s a good future topic….Mercedes column vs floor shifters on sedans.
From what I’ve seen, the W123 marked the end of column shifters. I saw a US spec 1973 450SE (W116) for sale with a column shifter…I thought that was very cool because I had never seen one.
But the fintail sedans and the W114/115 that replaced them had column shifters or floor.
That’s my request for the week 🙂
I’ve only driven three Mercedes in my fairly long life. Two had 4 speed manual column shifters. Both were far less refined than the 4 on the tree of the Peugeot 504 I drove a few times.
Intriguing is the lack of even a lap belt for the centre seat, and the awkward sitting position and congested footwells that transmission tunnel would impose.
There’s no evidence of a folding armrest or fixings for a child seat, which was the other possibility that crossed my mind.
And that steering wheel looks huge!
Wow, habbout that! Gotta be only half a shade less rare than an Amazon with a 4-on-the-tree and Saxomat automatic clutch, offered briefly around 1960.
As to the attached pic: This miniature Swedish lady—perhaps akin to the driver shown above?—is presenting Hella’s version of the latest in headlamp technology newly available Europe-wide for 1972: the world’s first 2-filament halogen headlight bulb for low and high beam from a single halogen bulb. The speech balloon coming out of her mouth contains a traditional Swedish greeting that means “Happy new year!”. (I, for one, am not about to quarrel with a lady who lives in the headlight bucket of a pre-1972 Volvo 140. She says Hella H4, so that’s that.)
And the handbrake to the left on Amazon and 140.
Never come across one of these, but also found out last week you could get a column shift on a W124 MB.
Looks like a manual-trans shift pattern moulded into the gearstick knob. Wild! Taxicab-spec, maybe?
I would have liked that as a kid , sitting up front with mom and dad in a Volvo. We were crowded in our VW Squareback in Europe.