Over the years I have acquired many automotive window stickers. By accident, I guess. Every time I would buy a car or visit the junk yards I would search for stickers. In fact, I’ve been known to buy a car (or a few) just because it had the sticker in the glove box. If I ever snagged a day or half day off work for errands, a trip to the junk yard was a must to fit in.
Over time I would come to realize that these stickers have quite a history here in the U.S. In the 1950’s there was an Oklahoma senator named Mike Monroney who petitioned the draft of the Automobile Information Disclosure Act. This would require all dealers to display this sticker in the window of cars so that the consumer knew exactly what they were paying for. In 1958, this act was mandated for all dealers and a $1,000 fine could even be imposed for each new car a dealer sold without one. Of course, later on, stickers got more detailed with things like MPG and safety ratings being displayed, all for the purpose of consumers being well informed as they made their purchase decision.
In my thick stack of stickers is this 1975 Volvo 164 sticker, pictured above. I acquired this sticker from a car that I bought earlier this year. I will eventually post more about this car in the COAL series so stay tuned for that. But in short, this 164 had a starring role in a movie called Project Greenlights Stolen Summer. My wife and I drove up to Chicago from Arkansas to pick up this car on a chance that it would be salvageable. On further inspection I discovered that with the long amount of time it had spent up north, the rust had chewed away at vital components of the frame. In the end and to my disappointment, it had to be deemed a parts car.
Looking at this sticker in particular the major thing that catches your eye is the bold lettering at the top: “TEST DRIVE A VOLVO, BEFORE YOU PUT A VALUE ON IT”. To me, this is a decent ploy of getting the shopper to get in the car and drive it before you are “sticker shocked”. I mean, chances are you will think the price is reasonable once you drive it, at least that is the marketing tactic I envision. The next thing that you will see is that there are really no special features on the car as everything is labeled “standard”. The 164 was the top of the line model as it was, so many things were simply included as standard. However, I have seen entry level 140’s marked the same. Presumably there would be another sticker next to this sticker that would highlight all the dealer add on items, if any. Lastly, the price. For $8,565 this car could be yours! In today’s money that is roughly $41,000, which is really not too bad considering you are getting Volvo’s luxury line. And also not too bad considering I have seen some 1970’s Mercedes marked as high up as $19,000, but let’s be honest Volvo, you can’t really compete with a 450 SEL, no offense.
The selling dealer was Victory Motors in Savannah, GA. What I find interesting is that there is no Stevenson Avenue in Savannah, however there is a Stephenson Ave. Whether they changed the street spelling or they spelled it wrong to begin with, either way Victory Motors is no longer selling cars. What is in its place is Critz’s BMW, with a spiffy new building. Another interesting point is that the distributor is “Volvo Capitol” which, after a quick Google search, is also not a thing anymore. In fact, I could not find one trace of Volvo Capitol in my research. I assume that it was their financing side for dealers which probably went by the wayside when Ford bought them out. On a side note this car was imported into the states at Jacksonville, FL, but now I think they all come in around Baltimore or California, depending on where their final destinations are.
Although the sticker does not denote what color the car was, the VIN showed that the car was originally white, but had clearly been painted blue for the movie. This 164 was also sporting leather faced seats, integrated AC, and a bulb integrity sensor (whatever that is). As I recall (and confirmed by the sticker) it only had power operating front windows which was a year-specific feature of the 1975 164s. The rest is all relatively standard of what you’d expect on a car of this era, with the only upcharge being the $140 destination charge which now is almost ten times as much. Go figure.
It’s safe to say that this is before the days of over complication- short, sweet, and to the point- letting consumers know what seen and unseen features they are paying for. Now, I have to hunt to find the price on a modern day window sticker and sometimes just end up asking the dealer because the font is too small or wording is too convoluted to tell. I wish we could go back to the old way of selling cars. For the most part, honest and reasonable. As an aside, check out the back of the 164 sticker below, it tells you all about Volvo’s AM-FM radios. Come on, does it get any classier than that?
Connor: “Volvo Capitol” is likely another incorrect spelling. It was likely “Volvo Capital” – “capital” being the noun for financial assets or the funds received when obtaining loaned financial resources.
The noun “capitol” generally describes a building that serves as the home for a government. Now Columbia, Maryland is not too far from the US capitol building in DC but that likely does not mean anything. I think Volvo simply spelled two things wrong on the sticker.
Thank you for the mentioning that. I had just guessed it was something that lent dealers money to buy the cars. Kind of like “floor plan” type loans or something. Talk about a mistake in spelling!
The name, location, and spelling are correct for that Volvo distributor when the 164E was new. Presumably the name is derived from the region, like calling a regional distributor Volvo Great Lakes or Volvo Rocky Mountains.
I believe that the bulb integrity sensor was a system that told you when you had a burnt out light bulb. I recall my ’79 242 having something similar.
Yup! my 6 year old, ’75 164 had also had the bulb integrity sensor system.
Even with all new light bulbs, all verified as working properly, the bulb integrity warning light would come on when I stepped on the brakes.
I finally got sick of it flashing at me (a bright yellow color at night, darn distracting) and pulled the bulb out of the dashboard for the warning system.
Ahhhhhhh, the unintended irony here….
Bulb-outage indicators are obsolescing in sync with filament bulbs, which suits me just fine; they have a long and infuriating history of crying “Wolf”—whether integrated in the dashboard of a Volvo or Mercedes or Bimmer, or mounted above the school bus driver’s head in the form of an ELMO Exterior Light Monitor. The Volvo outage indicators were very sensitive to differences in current draw between the left and right bulb of whatever circuit was being monitored, so normal bulb production tolerances caused false alarms. So did normal variations in circuit resistance, socket grounds, etc as the cars aged. Your solution (yank the damn bulb out of the dashboard and keep track of bulb outage the old-fashioned eyeball way) is the only one guaranteed to work!
Cadillacs from the 70’s and at least partway into the 80’s have a simple but very effective lamp monitoring system. Fiber optic lines run from each light socket to two little pods on top of the front fenders (for the front lights) and just above the rear window, visible in the mirror (for the rear lights). When you turn the lights on, the little dots should all light up. Use the turn signal, they blink. Hit the brakes, the indicators in the rear get brighter. If any indicator doesn’t light up (or doesn’t blink, as the case may be), that’s the dead bulb. No electrical connections involved — the fiber optics just transmitted light from the sockets. Completely reliable so long as the fiber optics didn’t get cut or yanked out of place.
Volvo Capitol was simply a place where they stored all the cars that arrived from the port until they were sent to Volvo dealers. Unlike the Big Three who could store the cars in lots near the factory, Volvo did not have a US factory. These cars entered to USA at a sea port and were shipped to a holding pen(or several holding pens) waiting orders for which dealership needed cars.
These cars went by rail. As the Zip code is where I live in Columbia, I am going to guess that the holding pen for these cars was off of Snowdon River Pkwy (probably where Gateway Drive is) it used to be industrial down there and there are old railroad tracks that cut across Oakland Mills road (after Berger Rd) and lead in that direction.
Now all the cars (all manufacturers) are held near Annapolis Junction and the industrial park in Columbia is lots of tech buildings and offices.
Are you talking where the Home Depot is off of Robert Fulton Drive? Or further south on Snowden where the Lincoln Tech school is located now?
I work in that very zip code and it was the first thing that caught my eye looking at the lead it pic for the article.
Most likely, these cars came in to the port of Baltimore, as Columbia would’ve been fairly convenient, especially by rail car, if those tracks are even in use anymore. Those tracks cross Oakland Mills near that school on the other side of Snowden from where Maryland Homebrew is located (shout out to my homies), but in all my years working down here, I’ve never had to stop for a train, let alone one carrying cars!
Yes back where Rob Fulton Drive is
Those train tracks have not been used in years. I think the last time I saw one was in the 1990’s. I would always hear the train horn on summer nights when my window was opened. The main use for it was to ferry products and supplies back and forth to and from the GE Appliance Plant that in the same area and closed in the early 1990’s. The plant was located on what is now the 8700 Block of Robert Fulton Dr
The only vehicles that stop for those tracks are the local school buses that are required to stop at track by law but nothing has come down the tracks in years
Here is a link showing some of these tracks still around in Columbia.
http://www.trainweb.org/oldmainline/wasspur1.htm
I had no idea. Thanks for the link!
I may drive home that way tonight to cross at that crossing.
If there are no more trains ever coming, someone should let the school bus drivers, heck ALL drivers know. I stop at all railroad crossings too, but have often ignored this one, just like everyone else does on that road during rush hour.
If there are tracks, they should be stopped at. You never know when someone might decide to run a train down them again. I’m glad the school buses actually stop at all tracks, although why school bus manufacturers and purchasers seem to think seat belts are a superfluous extravagance is beyond me.
There are ways to get a crossing posted as “exempt” but I suspect there is a whole lot of paperwork involved.
Very interesting. I consider myself a Volvo “nut” and I did not know that. This would make sense coming off the ship, to store the cars there.
I’m not sure what role exactly Volvo Capitol played in distribution, but this ad (an official Volvo ad from 1975) indicates that they managed European delivery, at least for the US East Coast.
The address given on this ad is an industrial building off of Old Annapolis Rd. — if Volvo Capitol stored large amounts of vehicles, it was likely at another location.
Anyway, this does show that Volvo Capitol was, indeed, a real entity, and that the spelling of Capitol is correct.
It also saws that this entity handled tourist sales. My 1990 Volvo 240DL was bought by somebody that took the tour setup by Volvo and picked up their car and drove it about before having Volvo ship it to a local Volvo car dealer in the USA to pick it back up. On mine it had a sticker denoting this.
Maybe this place was a hub for picking those cars up?
There is still those industrial buildings off of Red Branch Road.
I don’t think Volvo stayed to long at that place. According to a magazine that was given out in 1977 by the local paper(Columbia Flier) to commemorate 10 years of Columbia Maryland. 9198 Red Branch Road was home to Head Sportswear. I think the current building at that address is the original one. The ones in the front are from the 1990’s
Also it seems that the Swedish King toured Columbia in 1976 and Volvo was a sponsor
Also nothing is complete without a pic of a car ad. Odonnell was a big car dealership on rte 40
Closer look
Car Ad from 1977
The King of Sweden
That was a very expensive car back in the day. I still remember my ’73 Vega GT snickering at roughly $2300.00 (and yes, Paul fights me on this one, it was damned bare bones other than the GT package), and my ’76 Monza 2+2 was somewhere in the $3-4000.00 range (also rather bare bones).
I always assumed the uniform destination charge was the work of the senators from Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Florida to make the buyers of cars in the central US subsidize shipping to the far corners of the country.
I did a double take when I saw the sticker. That’s my city! And you included a picture of the BMW side of the Critz dealership where I bought my 540i earlier this year. Critz Mercedes (as well as Buick/GMC) is across the street. BMW and Mercedes used to share one building but one or the other required Critz to separate the competing brands. I grew up in Savannah but don’t recall there ever being a Volvo dealership on Stephenson Avenue. But then I was just a toddler in 1975 😁
I could not really find anything for “Victory Motors” on Google. I did find a old lawsuit dating back to the late 1950’s. It is Victory Motors v. Chrysler, so maybe the branched out a bit. Could be a really small Volvo dealer that you may not have noticed.
I remember a few GM dealers that sold Saab back in the day. You never knew they had Saab until you walked into the dealer.
Victory Motors had formerly been located on Montgomery Street and had been the Studebaker dealership in Savannah. I believe the Montgomery building was demolished to make way for an exit for Interstate 16. I do not know if Victory Motors had already left that location by the time of the demolition or if they relocated because of it. I recall the old Critz Buick building on the corner of Stephenson and Abercorn Streets being in mid demolition to make way for the new BMW showroom and thinking that it was much older than I had realized.
Columbia, Md. is near DC, hence, Capitol.
$8425 in 1975 dollars roughly equals $40,210 in today’s dollars.
WoW!
I see no mention of air conditioning on the Monroney window sticker?
That was pretty pricey for a Volvo for sure!
The AC is under “integrated air conditioning 13th line down. It was standard on all 164’s.
The Volvo 164 was always considered their luxury car. This sticker was exactly the price of my father’s new 1975 Thunderbird. I would rather have had him buy the Volvo, but he was used to driving big American cars, and didn’t want to consider anything foreign.
Check again, it’s about halfway down the list, labeled as “integrated” air conditioning. I suppose as opposed to an add-on system or something.
At one point, Jacksonville was the largest port of entry for foreign cars, one of the reasons why it lost that distinction was due to numerous lawsuits brought about by air pollution while waiting at the docks. Now, cars go to Brunswick/Savannah where the last time I checked, had many cars sitting in grassy fields.
Because Jacksonville was such a “popular” port, it was possible….up until the mid 70s to find all sorts of oddball cars on the streets of Jacksonville. Example? 2 different Triumph Italias and even a Triumph Mayflower or 2.
The grassy fields full of cars are still there, at least they were a couple of years ago. We made a quick trip to Jekyll Island on the way to Jacksonville and St. Augustine and the fields full of cars was not something we expected to see. I presume that they must have security in place but it looks like it would be easy to make a car disappear from a field, if one was so inclined. I also presume that the individual cars don’t spend much time in the field as being parked on what appears to be damp ground is not good for vehicles.
I was thinking Mercedes uses a port in Georgia for East Coast cars. That’s true, along with Baltimore being the other East Coast port. Here is a fascinating website of all their US ports, prep centers, storage lots, etc.:
https://www.daimler.com/company/north-america/mercedes-benz-usa.html
I recalled that US headquarter used to locate in Montvale, New Jersey for many years until recent times when it moved to Atlanta, Georgia.
Until 1980s, the US headquarter used to handle the entire North American region until it was split up into several separate entities serving their own countries.
During one of the speech therapies (I’m deaf) at the university in the early 1990s, I had a student therapist working with me. She mentioned that she hailed from Montvale. I asked her if her father worked for Mercedes-Benz or not. She was gobsmacked and wondered how did I know…
Now, about those “steel-belted WHITE WALL radial tires” listed on the window sticker ………
Where can I get some ? ! ?
I saw this too, and found it interesting. I have seen some new 164’s on car lots in pictures, and never seen white walls. I wonder if this was maybe an option to have white walls? Maybe the dealers turned them inside out for certain customers?
Just interesting they added the white walls as “standard”.
Yes, I wonder about that, too! I have never seen any European cars with whitewall tyres even in Europe except for Rolls-Royce and a few odd British cars.
You’re not Gary’s son, by any chance?
My father is Gary Kleck, yes.
Welcome to the writer’s club, and congratulations on a fine first contribution.
Nice to see someone else from NWA on here. Worked with your dad for years…a great guy, and an outstanding golfer!
Ah yes, unfortunately golfing gene was not passed on to me.
Thanks for letting me know there are some NWA’s out there! Who should I say gave him the compliment? I will pass it along to him.
Buzzdog, if you don’t want to be public, send an email to CC and I will forward…
That was a really expensive car in 1975. I remember walking through the lot of a Mercedes dealer with my father one evening after hours in 1974. Everything there was between 8500 and $10-11k as I remember it. Dad was bowled over by the prices, amazed that they were as expensive as his Mark IV if not more, and mostly for smaller 6 cyl or diesel cars.
I seem to remember that my mother’s 74 Luxury LeMans came in between $4k and 4500. We had full carpet and a windshield-mounted antenna too. 🙂
Here’s the MSRPs for some 1975 MY Mercedes:
230: (gas 4 cyl): $9172
240D: $9811
300D: $12,194
280: $12,756
280S: $15,057
450SEL: $19,975
450SL: $17,653
450SEC: $22,053
The most direct competitor to the Volvo 164 would have been the $12,756 280.
450SLC, not 450SEC. The nomenclature, SEC, didn’t appear until September 1981 with the introduction of two-door C126.
You have refreshed my memory. It was not $10k cars that were getting my attention, it was $20k cars which were unheard of anywhere else (certainly in my moderately sized midwestern city).
There was a lot of inflation then so figures a year or two in either direction can make comparisons difficult, but I recall seeing the sticker from the 77 New Yorker my family bought used. It had been a $10k car (well loaded with features). That car may have only been $8k in 1975, which highlights the expense of this Volvo.
I always enjoy looking at the Monroney’s of pre-1980s cars.
It was around 1977 that I started learning the prices, in my quest to be prepared should my dad need “help” buying a new car.
$8565 was a LOT of money for a car in 1975.
Just for context, the base price of a Corvette in 1977 was around $7700. That was also the base for a Coupe De Ville, or a Thunderbird.
More my family’s size, a compact in 1977 (Nova) started at around $3500.
A 1976 Rabbit was $3499.
From 1975 to 1977, car prices increased significantly. The rate of increase slowed from 1977 to 1979, then really took off.
So, $8600 in 1975 for an import is analogous to $9500 or so in 1977.
I had no idea these cars were that expensive when new.
I think the biggest ‘bargain’ had to be an early 1970s BMW 2002. I’ve seen an MSRP sticker of $3200 for one.
Around that time, that would get you a US compact or midsize with auto and AM radio.
Yes, the rate of inflation was so extreme at one point that certain cars, like the Cutlass Supreme two-door, could be driven for a year and sold for practically what you paid for it. Of course, buying a new one also meant that you’d have to cough up another 15% or more to get a similar, new replacement.
Interesting sticker. The thoroughly mediocre BorgWarner 35 3-speed automatic was standard equipment in ’75? Huh. I mean, it stands to reason given American tastes, but I’m a little over 98% sure I’ve encountered, in U.S. wrecking yards, more than one ’75 164 with M410 (4-speed manual + Laycock de Normanville electric overdrive). So I guess the stick shift was optional, and I wonder what it cost.
And I’d forgot Volvo jumped on GM’s dumb windshield-integrated-antenna bandwagon (yes, it was integrated into the windshield. No, it wasn’t much of an antenna).
“Unit body construction: Standard” type of stuff makes me roll my eyes (what, like I could pay extra for body-on-frame? C’mon, what is this, Tim Drives an Aries?) almost as much as seeing side marker lights, side impact guard beams, head restraints, and other equipment every car legally has to have, listed on the Monroney Label.
$8,565, eh? That’s $40,423 in 2018 dollars, yeehaw! A 2019 Volvo S60 Momentum T6 AWD starts at $40,300.
That is a really good question on the standard transmission. I know earlier years you could get a 4 speed. For some reason I am thinking that 75 had a standard 3 speed auto. I know a lot of the 164 enthusiasts put the 4 speed in after the fact. I have yet to see a 75 with a 4 speed, but I am sure they are out there.
The 75 stand out from the rest of the 164 years as it has the biggest bumpers, and 240 like head rests.
You are correct, however this car would probably be more compared to the S90 of today which starts quite a bit higher in price.
On a side note, the 75 164 is very rare in Sweden, as they were not sold over there. Sweden had already switched to the 240/260 by that time while we got the last of the 164s.
When I have some time I’ll have to scratch this itch by trawling through the Volvo 164 factory parts cattledog. There’d be enough application-specific parts to confirm the availability of the M410 in ’75. D-Jetronic ECU and MPS, for example. I’m pretty sure I remember doing such lookup before and coming up “yes”, but I’ll look again (sometime).
Other ’75 tipoffs: the 6-panel taillights, the electronic ignition, the catalytic converter…
As for ’75s not being sold in Sweden: that seems to be almost but not quite the case; Jon-Erik Öberg, who runs the 164 club, is deservedly renowned as a high-holy subject matter expert; he says 40 1975 164s were sold in Sweden. His own ’75 appears to have started life in North America (I’d say “h’mm, lookit what kind of transmission it has”, but he has rebuilt the car as an every-possible-optionmobile, including installing a NOS roof panel with sunroof!). The scarcity of ’75s there might help explain the fixation some Swedish 164 enthusiasts have of grafting the big 6-panel ’75 rear lamps (also used on 262/264 cars through ’78) onto ’73-’74 cars originally fitted with the 4-panel lamps. Also see [u][b][url=https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1973-volvo-164-de-luxe-green-swede-needs-shoes/#comment-535480]here[/url][/u][/b] (and subsequent comment thread).
I agree with you on the 164’s top-model placement in the range making it comparable to today’s S90, which nicely illustrates the trends in both content and content-for-the-dollar over the years.
The 1975 164 Owner’s Manual for the US and Canada is available online, and says that it may have either a manual or automatic transmission.
Two possibilities: the manual may have been Canada only. Or the manual was phased out during the model year, which would not surprise me, as the model was ending and the take rate for the manual was undoubtedly very low.