60 years of the Volvo Amazon

Six decades after it first went on sale, we remember Volvo's amazing Amazon

One of the last cars driven by Mike Hawthorn was a Swedish built four-door saloon that he initially expected to be "unpretentious" when he reviewed it for a Sunday newspaper.

However, the 1958 World Champion found the finish of the Volvo 122S "Amazon" to be "as splendid as the Midnight Sun" and the steering "as qualm free as the summer sea". He may have regarded the gearchange "as stiff as the noblest upper lip" but all in all Hawthorn found the first ever Volvo to be officially imported into the UK to have "a take-off as vivid as a rocket burst".

The Amazon - the name was never used for overseas models - was announced to the press in February 1956 as the eventual replacement for the long-running PV series. To save cost the 120 series had to share the 1.6-litre engine, the transmission and the wheelbase of the older Volvo but the designer Jan Wilsgaard created rather slick coachwork with subtle overtones of Detriot.

American stylist influence was not a new development on a Volvo - the PV resembled a 1941 Ford - but Wilsgaard's ideas were not always well-received by the company's management - one director apparently believed that the 120 has "too much of the pin-up about it. It would be better if it was ugly rather than beautiful".

One of the designer's influences was a Kaiser he had seen at Gothenburg harbour and the Amazon was first Volvo devised with the US export market in mind, down to the optional two-tone paint finish. This would further horrify any traditional Swedish driver who believed that a car should be about as frivolous as your average Ingmar Bergman drama.

In 1956 British motorists could only dream of taking the wheel of a new Volvo in the same way of winning the Monte Carlo Rally or dinner for two with Diana Dors. Prior to 1967 Swedish traffic drove on the left but its cars were LHD and it would not be until November 1958 that the Brooklands Motor Company Ltd began to sell RHD models in the UK markets. In its homeland, the Amazon's ex-works price was around £855, but import duties and Purchase Tax raised the cost to £1,399 7s, placing the 120 firmly in the Rover/Humber market sector.

This made a new Amazon far more expensive than its nearest British rivals but none of them could hope to challenge the Volvo's performance and sheer enjoyment of watching the needle dart across the strip speedometer. Any driver who traded in their Standard Vanguard, a car that was to enthusiastic motoring what James Robertson Justice was to ballet dancing, would have been in a state of shock in their initial stages of Volvo ownership.

There were also the social kudos of having "one of those foreign cars" in the driveway and the novelty of front seat belts, devices then mainly associated with rally cars or BOAC aircraft. These had been fitted to all Amazons since August 1958 but would not be standard equipment on any British car until the Jensen 541S of 1960.

Volvo progressively updated the Amazon, offering the twin carburettor 122S in 1958, a two-door saloon 1961 and a five-door 221 estate in 1962. By that point, the marque was now the third best selling import in the UK, behind Volkswagen and Renault. For £101 Ruddspeed Ltd could give your Amazon an extra 43 bhp and in 1965 Hampshire Constabulary started to use tuned 221s, the first foreign police cars in the UK.

The last Amazon left the production line in July 1970, when its high bonnet and thick screen pillars and ornate strip speedometer were redolent of another age. But even then, the 120 offered standards of build quality and attention to detail, such as the lumbar support adjustment for the front backrests and the volcanic heater, that were lacking in many of its competitors.

Sixty years after its launch the first Volvo sold in Britain remains, in the words of Mike Hawthorn, "a sensation of a car".

With Thanks to Martin Bayntun and Per-Åke Fröberg of the Volvo Car Corporation

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