The Volvo 760 was introduced in 1982 to replace the 264 GLE. While the 760 GLE and its less expensive sibling the 740 were meant to replace the 240/260 series, both would be built concurrently for several years. Accounting for all redesigns and name changes, this car lasted all the way to 1998, as the straight six-powered S90/V90.
Like just about every Volvo since the 120/Amazon, the 760 was designed by Volvo’s in-house stylist, Jan Wilsgaard. He had clearly been smitten with rectilinear styling since the 140 was introduced in 1966, and the 760 was no exception. The square theme continued into the interior styling.
The 760 had a unitized body and was powered by the 2.8L B28 PRV V6, a joint-venture engine used by Peugeot, Renault and Volvo, not to mention DeLorean. It produced 130 hp @ 5500 rpm and 153 lb ft of torque. It was not a particularly sturdy engine, however. In 1984, the 760 Turbo was introduced. Instead of the V6, it had the turbocharged and intercooled B230FT ‘redblock’ engine, producing 160 hp @ 2900 rpm and 187 lb ft of torque. With this new powerplant, the 760 Turbo was a pretty speedy car in its day.
Contrary to Volvo’s usual practice of the second digit of the model name corresponding to the number of cylinders, the 760 Turbo had an inline four-cylinder. Other than more exterior chrome, different alloy wheels and a fancier interior with automatic climate control, it was much like the 740 Turbo, also introduced in 1984.
In 1986, wagons were added to the 740 and 760 line, and that included a 760 Turbo wagon. You might say it really hauled. By 1986, standard features included an electric sunroof, AM/FM stereo cassette with a five-band graphic equalizer and heated seats. 760s also had a unique Nivomat automatic leveling system. These cars were fully loaded right off the assembly line; you really didn’t need to add anything.
I found this gray 760 Turbo near Paul’s former place of residence of Iowa City, in Coralville. It looks to be in fair shape. This particular car has the 1986-89 740 Turbo alloy wheels, as the 760s used a multi-spoke wheel with a broader hub section, as seen in the brochure pictures above.
It reminds me of the ’88 740 Turbo my dad had. It was special-ordered at Lundahl Motors in Moline in bright red with tan leather and the optional wood trim kit. It was the first car we had with an airbag. Dad traded in a silver ’84 240 GL sedan for this car, and needless to say it was a lot faster. The alloys on these Turbos are my favorite style of Volvo wheel.
I remember this car well, as Dad took me to school in it every morning between 2nd and 5th grades. It was boxy but sharp, and I loved the color. It was hard for him to balance his morning coffee in the years before cupholders, though.
The 740 Turbo lasted in this form through 1989, while the 760 lasted through ’87. In 1988 the 760 GLE and Turbo received a new nose and instrument panel, and the last ones were built in 1990. These were solid, well built cars, and I really liked them. Dudley Moore probably said it best in Crazy People: “They’re boxy but they’re good.”
In Maine, in the late 80s, this was the Respectable thing to own. Nothing wrong with it, hard to get jazzed about. The buyers were the sort of doctors and professors who didn’t seek jazz in their transport, but wanted something a little nicer than a CamCord.
I think your dad’s car is the only one I’ve ever seen in red. I agree on the Turbo wheels, they were the best looking of the Volvo line. They’re crazy valuable now.
I had a 740 GLE with the B234F and as great as it was I wished it had a 5 speed.
I vaguely remember Volvo commercials targeted at Buick in the late 80s. A guy was at a Buick dealer looking at a Park ave and exclaims something like “how much? For a Buick?!” Then goes to a Volvo dealer.
Kiwi Robbie Francevic used to race these turbo bricks both here and in OZ. They were said to handle like a block of flats/condos to you, but fast. I saw a guy at the Taupo drags with one of these with the boost screwed way up and a pair of slicks he was having a ball and giving some of the riceburners a good run.
IPD suspension upgrades made these Bricks a lot more tossable.
http://www.ipdusa.com/techtips/10023/200-700-900-suspension-upgrade-stages
Sadly I was a poor student when I owned my 740 and 940 and couldn’t afford IPD stuff for them.
Oh he race tuned the suspension but couldnt really outpace M3 BMWs and those couldnt hold a candle to a HDT Commodore they were quick but not really competetive
You sure about the 760 losing its turbo option in 1988? My dad and I looked at one (’88 760 turbo sedan) with the updated interior and the independent rear axle in the late 1990s but passed and ultimately got an ’87 740T sedan with the great 5-spoke alloys, which became my college car.
I later had a ’91 940 SE, which was a 960 with a B230FT turbo four.
I forgot that the 760 Turbo continued through 1990. I’ll update the post.
My dad got a ’91 940 SE (my avatar is that car) after the 740 Turbo. It was black with saddle tan interior and factory spoiler. It wound up being my first car and I had it seven years. It was a great car! I’ll be doing a CC on it one of these days…
Mine had the saddle tan interior but was forest green.
Got it with 207k and sold it with 245k. The powertrain – engine and trans – never gave any issues apart from fluid leaks. Other systems had some problems, though; mainly electrical issues with the climate control and the power seats. At those times, I yearned for the manual seats and manual climate controls of the 740 Turbo.
What is it with European cars that they can’t seem to make an electrical connector that doesn’t corrode if their life depended on it? GM and Ford connectors are reliable due to self-sealing boot design and plating chemistry (no experience with Chryslers here), but all Euro cars seem to be barely above a Radio Shack spade lug for everything. In fact, the entire electrical system on the 240’s was spade-lug everything with 1960’s vintage ceramic fuses until the very end in 1993. Time is not kind to these sorts of systems.
Not to mention the biodegradable insulation that the earlier Volvos used – my friend’s 1980 242GT finally got hauled away (with close to 400K miles on original engine still running fine) due to the underhood wiring harness falling apart, causing overnight battery drainage.
The German cars I’ve personally had experience with haven’t been nearly as electrical gremlin ridden as the Swedish cars I’ve owned.
I have particular vitriol for the engineers who designed the electrical system in my Saab 900, but the 940SE sunroof would occasionally refuse to shut, and the A/C would shut down when under more than 1/2 throttle on a hot day. Searching the Brickboard (popular Volvo forum) yielded no easy fixes for the A/C issue.
If you don’t mind the period-common horrendous turbo lag, these things are lightning fast sleepers. People just don’t expect a Volvo to go fast! They originally used heavy Garrett turbos, but a Mitsubishi TD04 transplant from a 90+ car along with its less-square exhaust manifold will help it to spin up quicker. I think it’s due to the smaller impeller diameter. All the turbo cars had factory intercoolers. If you score a Volvo turbo with a 92+ engine block it should also have piston wristpin oil squirters from the factory. The engines are mechanically an absolutely bulletproof design as long as you keep them in coolant and oil.
Some owners get a 960 coolant bottle with the magnetic low level sensor and wire it to a buzzer and unused dash light to warn of low coolant levels. If you run it hard, let it idle a few minutes to cool off the bearings in the turbo. Another trick is to add an electric coolant pump on an auto-timer to keep the turbo bathed in flowing water for a few minutes after shutdown.
I’d gander that grey car is an 86 (no air bag but has 3rd brake light). There are 3 flavors of dash that went into the 7/9/S/V90 series. The 88+ 760’s got a “big” dash shared with the 960s and S/V90s through end of production of that chassis in 99. I think the only change they made was a double-DIN radio on 95+. “Lesser” 740 Volvos got the earlier dash seen in the grey car with cable/vacuum operated HVAC. When the 940 was released in 91 the 740’s inherited its upgraded dash with electric servo HVAC (but still not “climate control”).
There’s also no exposed cowl panel on 88+ 7/960’s. You see slots behind the hood on a 740 of similar vintage but not the 760. The hood’s a shade longer and covers the cowl area to the windshield. It makes me wonder if they thought the 2.9L I-6 was going to be ready in 88 and they had to lengthen the engine compartment.
The old 83-87 760 dashes always cracked horribly around the insert for the climate control temp sensor (right in the middle of the exposed panel facing the passenger – the most visible place in the car!). If you had a 780 coupe, you got the 760 dash with beautiful birch wood inserts there and on the doors.
My 88 740 turbo was acquired in 2007 quite cheaply from the original owner, after a small meltdown due to overheating caused by a blown coolant hose. Flawless interior, garage kept since new, 235k on the clock. My nephew had just barrel-rolled my 92 940 Turbo, so the 92 engine was dropped in with 100k fewer miles on it. Up to 250k and climbing. I’ve got the bits to convert it to an M46 5-speed when I eventually find time. I’ve also considered changing it over to a 91+ dash (upper half less square and less prone to cracking) but can’t seem to get straight answers on the compatibility between 83-90 clusters and 91-95 clusters.
I had no idea the even the last S90/V90 had the 1988 dashboard! My grandmother had a 1996 960, and to me, the dashboard seemed fairly “modern” for a mid-1990s car.
It was a very comfortable car.
Mmmmmmmmmm. I have secret hankerings for a 760. My grandparents had a 164E from new (manual o/d, aircon, sunroof, leather, fuel-injected 3 litre straight-6, awesome!) followed by a 264 (huge bumpers, crappy PRV V6, not so awesome). The 760 came out here in NZ in 1984, and 10-yr-old me waited expectantly for a 760 to appear in my grandparents garage. Sadly they decided Volvos were getting a bit pricey, and bought an XE Ford Fairmont Ghia instead (which was big and veloury, I loved it). Grandad made up for not buying a 760 by getting me the brochure instead – and that was the start of my now-5000+ brochure collection…
The XE were an even more solid, long-lasting car, so not a bad choice
Sadly their XE, which was bought new in August 1984, was fuel-injected, and enormously unreliable. It often wouldn’t restart within an hour or three after having being driven, and spent the equivalent of 3 full months at the dealer before it was a year old. In 1986, it refused to start after a family dinner, and once the dealer had retrieved it, the head was taken off the engine. They discovered the block had never been finished properly, and the cylinder bores appeared never to have been honed and were slightly oval.
So it was swapped for a new non-EFI XF Fairmont, that was faultless. But all in all, the XE was a nice-looking car, and a lovely comfy place to sit in while waiting for the breakdown crew. The XF was then replaced by an also-faultless new EA2 Ghia, and then by the world’s most unreliable car, a 2000/2001 Renault Scenic (which is like a 4-wheeled fault-magnet…).
But back to the Volvos, my grandfather, now 94, still recalls his favourite car as being the 164E, and I’m sure he wonders what would have happened if he bought a 760GLE like 10-yr-old me hoped!
Great, I’ve been waiting for the promised CC turbobrick write-up. We have 3 – a facelift 760 in black with oxblood; 740 Turbo in dark met.blue with blue part-leather, and a facelift 740 Turbo in dismal grey/grey. The most amazingly tough and reliable cars I’ve ever owned. Our 740 GLE wagon would fit anything, but was hit-and-runned and written off. Although the 240 coolness hasn’t really rubbed off on them at the mo, this is the car that saved Volvo – well for 30 years anyway. It moved them credibly out of the Saab-weird market and into the low-end Merc game. They sold well over a million and couldn’t stop making them – demand for the V90 wagons stayed strong right up till ’98. Believe it or not, the Ikea-chic knife edges were a huge style hit in Italy of all places.
The question I’ve always had is which one is better – Volvo 700 or 900? Wagon of course…
They raced the wagon in 2litre class in England coz of better aerodynamics
They did with the 850. Did they race the 7-900’s as well? I have never heard of it.
The design made them go faster but there was zero downforce in the corners,. I’m pretty sure it was more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
…I don’t know about European unreliability: ironically the most unreliable part of these cars, the instrument cluster, is made in Japan.
Still has the Volvo design with the magic (crumbling) plastic. The speedo on my ’93 940 turbo wagon failed, and it was the service counter. I loved the car, the interior was deteriorating but this was in the Texas sun. Mine had rear facing third-row, something I always wanted to ride in as a kid, never did. My kids did.
As for cup holders, did the earlier 740s not have them? My 940 had a pair that slid out of the center armrest.
There was an accessory armrest with cupholders for the 740/760, but they were pretty bulky compared to the standard armrest lid.
Maybe I’m hallucinating this, but I thought that the second digit (4 or 6) indicated the type of rear suspension: 740s (and 940s, too) had a solid rear axle, while 760 and 960 cars had an IRS.
The exception was the US market 940 SE, which was a 960 except for the turbo four. My ’91 SE had the Nivomat self-leveling suspension.
Also, I think the 760 wagon had a solid axle. The 960 wagon got an independent rear axle, though.
It would be great to have a last of breed V90 wagon, but that inline 6 is not nearly as reliable as a red-block turbo four.
I love these cars. My family had three of these – an ’87 760 Turbo, an ’85 740 GLE and a ’91 960 Wagon.
This was the family car to buy in the 1980’s if you wanted to impress your friends and neighbors with how smart you were – all my mom’s friends and my friend’s parents were putting Volvo 740/760’s in their driveways.
The 2.3L non-turboed cars were slugs but were fine cars otherwise. The turbo was a blast to drive although the handling could get a little wild if pushed hard – turbo lag was bad off the line unless you brake-torqued it (don’t tell dad!) but once moving the small displacement and large car meant the RPMs and throttle were usually high and open enough that boost was never far away. The I6 in the 960 was probably my favorite – what a sweet singing engine – silky smooth, effortlessly pulled to 7K.
These cars had the perfect balance between handling and ride, although they could get unpredictable if pushed to the edge* – as long as you kept it under 95% though they were very competent handling cars that soaked up rough roads while retaining taut handling. Very enjoyable cars to drive for any situation.
* The turbo being the worst offender due to its proneness to sudden onset of turbo power. The 740 was hard to get going fast enough to get into trouble. In the middle was the 960 which had a much more linear power delivery but would still get squirrely in the rear on occasion. I accidentally got sideways a couple of times in the 760 and 960 (don’t tell mom!) whereas I’ve only got sideways in my Mustang on purpose (don’t tell my wife!).
Yeah, the Garrett T3 in my 744Ti had loony turbo lag. If boost hit in a tight corner, things got pretty entertaining with the skinny rear tires, fairly light curb weight, and open diff. I almost spun out a couple times on interstate 5 in Seattle when hitting standing water under boost, with fairly new tires too.
The 944SE I later drove was heavier and had a Mitsubishi turbo that really quelled turbo lag. It felt almost like a normally aspirated car, which I’m sure was Volvo’s goal.
I’m looking for a 1987 760 turbo for parts. Anyone know of any for sale at this time?